Paul Ramirez Jonas

He has participated in the Johannesburg Biennale, the Seoul Biennial, the Shanghai Biennial, the 28th São Paulo Biennial, the 53rd Venice Biennale, and the 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.

He has participated in the 1st Johannesburg Biennale; the 1st Seoul Biennial; the 6th Shanghai Biennial; the 28th São Paulo Biennial and the 53rd Venice Biennial.

Paul Ramírez Jonas (born 1965, Pomona, California) is an American artist and arts educator, who is known for his social practice artworks exploring the potential between artist, audience, artwork and public.

Many of Ramirez Jonas's projects use pre-existing texts, models, or materials to reenact or prompt actions.

Paul Ramírez Jonas was born in 1965 in Pomona, California and raised in Honduras.

In 1987, Ramirez Jonas graduated with a B.A. from Brown University, and went on to earn an M.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989.

Shortly after receiving his Master’s Degree, Ramírez Jonas began exhibiting his work in New York in 1990.

From the 1990-2004, Ramírez Jonas was primarily known for producing artworks that utilized a wide array of media for display in galleries.

For example, he was recognized for a series of sculptures where he recreated historical kite designs for the experiments of Alexander Graham Bell and other inventors.

It should be acknowledged that in this period his practice was not limited to only gallery exhibitions but included performance that interacted with audience members.

However this format of presentation was an exception and much of his recognition in the 1990s and into the 2000s was in both in commercial and institutional gallery exhibitions.

This exhibition contextualized the gallery based work of the 1990s with the later work of the 2000s.

In considering the artist’s evolution over the nearly three decades, the exhibition presented Ramírez Jonas’ oeuvre as possessing a distinct continuity.

His work is included in various public museum collections including the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, among others.

Taking the early prototypes for flying machines as points of departure, Ramírez Jonas built kites that he launched from the beach in reference to the experiments of the Wright Brothers.

Each kite was fitted with a timer that, when it went off, photographed the view of the artist below.

Like thus, Ramírez Jonas’ early works such as ‘Heavier than Air’ often recreated or reenacted historical moments in both traditional and contemporary media.

In 1991, in collaboration with fellow artist Spencer Finch, the duo created an alternative audio tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entitled Masterpieces Without the Director.

In 1999, Ramirez Jonas produced a project entitled A Better Yesterday for the exhibition Panorama 2000 organized by the Centraal Museum in Utrecht.

This work consisted of painting an analogue clock face on the pavement and buildings of the city center of Utrecht.

As the 2000s progressed, Ramírez Jonas created public works to intimate drawings, performances and videos.

Through his practice, he sought to challenge the definitions of art and the public and to engineer active audience participation and exchange.

Ramírez Jonas described his role as "extending beyond the private reader, and into someone who invites viewers to join in. The result of this shift is the reassertion of a contract between the artwork and its public."

In 2003, Jonas presented alongside artist Janine Antoni at Miami Art Museum, former Pérez Art Museum Miami.

The exhibition was part of the museum's New Works series, and the duo showcased two of various collaborative projects.

Mirror a commissioned work, and Always New, Always Familiar.

This period would culminate in a survey show in 2004 at Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK.

This exhibition examined the early works of Ramírez Jonas and his exploration of technological progress as a backdrop to address concepts of time, memory and loss.

Despite this emphasis, in the catalogue that accompanied the 2004 Ikon exhibition, editor Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy acknowledges the artist's growing interests in “public space”.

Since 2004, Ramírez Jonas' efforts were increasingly recognized as part of the fields of Social Practice and Socially Engaged Art.

This “turn to the social” by many artists consisted of a wide ranging set artistic approaches that embraced art making strategies that were durational, participatory and cross disciplinary and that cultivated links between the aesthetic and political.

Ramírez Jonas’ series of works that involved an exchange of keys with the audience had particular import for the field of socially engaged artists and thinkers.

These projects were Mi Casa Su Casa produced in San Diego and Tijuana for inSite_05 (2005), Talisman produced in São Paulo for the 28th Bienal de São Paulo (2008) and Key to the City produced in New York City with Creative Time (2010) among others.

Notably his work in this period, he distinguished himself by maintaining his position as the author of the work.

Whereas other socially engaged artists sought to share or question the role of the author through collaborative production.

Although Ramírez Jonas’ work was contingent on the audience enacting the work, he always maintained an investment in the production of art objects as exemplified in his series of projects that circulates keys.

In considering these art objects, writer and curator Nato Thompson wrote that the keys, “Recontextualized, they offer opportunities for participants to contemplate a broader range of choices, possibilities, and social interactions.” With Ramírez Jonas’ interest in speech acts, citizenry and audience participation, his works embodied many of the concerns of socially engaged art.

His approach described at times as a “MicroUtopia” for its capacity to temporarily engage the audience directly in small but exceptional acts that address large scale societal issues.

In addition to conceiving public projects, both permanent (Taylor Square in Cambridge, and Hudson River Park, New York City) and temporary (such as Talisman at 28th Bienal de São Paulo, 2008), Ramírez Jonas was the subject of numerous solo exhibitions.

In 2017, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston organized a comprehensive survey of Ramírez Jonas.