Now celebrating its 15th year of exhibiting experimental contemporary art, Locust Projects is pleased to present new work in the Project Room by New York-based Miami native Carlos Rigau. Entitled By Design, Rigau’s video sculpture consists of a low Formica wall and platform resembling retail shop fittings, which supports images and objects resembling wood. Rigau is concerned with artifice, display and perception, incorporating plastic imitations of natural materials into his installations. A video projected onto the piece depicts a rolling gate in flames, opening to reveal a gritty Miami landscape.

Since founding the artist-run space General Practice in Miami in 2011, Rigau has been concerned with the viewer’s experience of video in the built environment. His curatorial project Fighting Kissing Dancing (de la Cruz Collection and Fabric Workshop and Museum) was a collection of artists’ videos shown in an environment designed by the artist to contextualize the viewing experience. By Design is Rigau’s first solo exhibition in Miami since he relocated to New York.

In conjunction with the Project Room exhibition, Rigau’s work will be featured on over 30 bus shelters around Miami in February 2013 for the Bus Shelter Project, part of Locust Projects’ public art initiative Out of the Box, which commissions artists to create new work for public spaces in Miami.

About the artist
Carlos Rigau was born in 1978 and raised in Little Havana, Miami, Florida. He received his MFA from Hunter College in New York. His work has been exhibited at LMAKprojects and Jack Tilton Gallery in New York; Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago; and Nice and Fit in Berlin, Germany. In Miami he has exhibited at Miami Art Museum, MoCA North Miami, Dorsch Gallery, Dimensions Variable, Art and Cultural Center of Hollywood, and Art Center South Florida. His project room at the de la Cruz Collection in Miami, Fighting Kissing Dancing, was also exhibited at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Rigau is the founder of General Practice, an artist-run space that organizes projects in Miami and New York.

Locust Projects’ exhibitions and programming are made possible with the support from: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Galt & Skye Mikesell; Hannibal Cox Jr. Foundation; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor, and the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners. Special thanks: Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York.