Jorge Pardo

We are here yet again for another edition of my investigation into my personal aesthietic and artistic prferences. This time we are looking at the artist Jorge Pardo. For a little background, Jorge Pardo is a Cuban-American, MacArthur Genius Award winning artist, who works across many mediums. Including sculpture, installation, furniture, and architecture. I fell in love with Jorge Pardo when I was attending a school in Denmark and the guest houses on campus for guest lecturers and teachers were designed by Pardo. I will be looking at these houses today and trying to portray how and why I enjoy his work and why his practice resonates with me. The Pardo House is the name of the poject on the campus of Krabbesholm Højskole in Skive, Denmark which is the school I attended. The project is aimed at housing people for a temporary amount of time, similar to a small bunch of hotel rooms. There are no kitchens in these rooms. The school is for design, architecture, graphic design, fine art, and literature. So the teachers staying in these houses are usually people in these professions, so these rooms try and touch these aspects of design and architecture. His efforts I think are very successful and The reason I think that these are so well executed is because of how he masterfully blends the nordic environment and nordic design tendencies with Latin American colors and materials. He utilizes colored tile and a lighter color palette on the interior and cold metal and light wood on the exterior. He designed all of the furniture and fixtures in these rooms and the usage of wood in these pieces of furniture is very Danish in its minimalism yet somehow captures the essence of Cuban-American art that Pardo usually includes in a lot if his work. I am enamoured with the way he blends these two design cultures and can honestly say that the furniture pieces he made for this projects are extremely well made and fit the house perfectly. The reason I think the furniture works so well, is that the furniture combined with the surrounding tilework as well as the color palette, make the whole project fit seemlessly into the Danish setting as well as Pardo's entire practice that embodies modern Latin American art and design. Also, a very unique aspect of the house is a in-floor tile tub for the resident. This tub is something I wouldn't necesarily put in my own house nor is it the most practical way to wash oneself, but I think this is what makes his artistic expression so interesting and compelling.