Paul Ramirez Jonas

Paul Ramirez Jonas was born in California (1965) and raised in Honduras, and he currently lives, works, and teaches in New York City. Many of Ramirez Jonas’ projects use pre-existing texts, models, or materials to reenact or prompt actions and reinsert himself into his own audience. In his practice, he challenges the boundaries between artwork and spectator by asking participants to contribute something—such as a penny, wish, or key—in order to fully engage with his projects. In Mi Casa Su Casa (2005), he delivered a series of lectures about how space can be defined as either locked or unlocked, before inviting the audience to exchange keys with him and one another. The same year, he created a permanent work of public art, a small park called Taylor Square, for Cambridge, Massachusetts. 5,000 keys to the park’s gate were mailed to the homes closest to the commons, symbolizing a shared sense of ownership. Finally, Ramírez Jonas’ project Talisman (2008) for the 28th São Paulo Biennial asked visitors to engage in a public agreement, leaving behind a copy of one of their own keys in exchange for a key to the front door of the iconic Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavillion that housed the biennial. Keys to the City expands his longstanding interest in the key not so much as an object, but a vehicle for exploring social contracts as they pertain to trust, access, and belonging.

Ramírez Jonas holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BA from Brown University. He has received numerous honors, exhibited internationally, and lectured at universities across the country.

Paul Ramírez Jonas’ selected solo exhibitions include The Exploratorium, San Francisco, California; Pinacoteca do Estado, Sao Paulo, Brazil; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; a survey at Ikon Gallery (UK) and Cornerhouse (UK); Alexander Gray Gallery (NYC); Roger Björkholmen (Sweden); Nara Roesler Gallery (Brazil); and Postmasters Gallery (NYC). He has been included in group exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum (NYC); P.S.1 (NYC); The Whitechapel (UK); Irish Museum of Modern Art (Ireland); The New Museum (NYC); and Kunsthaus Zurich (Switzerland). He has participated in the Johannesburg Biennale; the Seoul Biennial, the Shanghai Biennial; the 28th Sao Paulo Biennial; the 53rd Venice Biennial and the 7 th Bienal do Mercosul , Porto Alegre, Brazil. In the summer of 2010, Ramirez Jonas created the Key to the City project in New York City with Creative Time, exploring the interaction between public and private space.

External Links

• Paul Ramirez Jonas’ website http://www.paulramirezjonas.com/selected/new_index.php