Caldera Presents
Fallen Fruit of Portland!
Join us for a day of free events and site specific artworks created by artist collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young), Natalie Ball, Bill Cravis, Bruce Conkle, Tahni Holt, Aaron Lish, Jess Perlitz, DeAngelo Raines, Caldera Youth and the Portland Art Museum.

A Day in Paradise

Saturday, October 24, 2015, 10am-8pm
Everyone is invited to participate! Paradise will move from the museum onto the park blocks and into downtown Portland. A Day in Paradise will celebrate the opening of ‘Paradise’ at the Portland Art Museum by Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) and an exhibition project created by Caldera Youth called the ‘Geography of We‘ opens concurrently at the Weiden+Kennedy Gallery. The public is invited to observe, interact and help create collaborative art making that is inspired by the history of Portland, themes of paradise and of course, the apple.
War Hoop with us! We’ll make a Magazine together! Share poems and songs with the river! Become a monument! Enter the right hand of the fellowship! Watch a rock move rocks!
EVERYTHING is FREE!

Natalie Ball, Warhoop Flashmob
2pm, Location: Portland Art Museum
Natalie will facilitate War Hooping as used in battle by Native Americans across the country. Also known as a battle cry, Li-Li is a vocal projection used for intimidation, celebration, and energy charge. Women use Lii-Lii which is a tongue/vocal projection that is LOUD! They still do them today. Natalie will bring people from her tribe to do Lii-Lii, but everyone in the attendance will be invited to participate with them.

Johnny Rotten Appleseed 2015
Bruce Conkle Paradise Lost
6 – 8pm, Location: RACC Building, 411 NW Park Ave
Bruce Conkle, “Paradise Lost” Bruce Conkle has created apple inspired drawings from history, mythology, and pop culture. He will electronically and astrally project these images outdoors on a large wall along the Park Blocks.


Bill Cravis, ?A Monument for Bicyclists
Noon – 4pm, Location: South Parks Block by the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt across from Portland Art Museum
Portland bicyclists become temporary “living statues” in the South Parks neighborhood, alongside the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt. A small replica of the concrete plinth supporting the Roosevelt statue will be placed near to the original. Bicyclists will be invited to become temporary “living statues” atop the miniature plinth, which will be photographed. These urban bicyclists will be displayed as today’s heroes – contemporary mavericks who play an active role in reducing the threat of global climate change. Photos will be placed online so that participants can download them.

Tahni Holt, ? apples & pomegranates
1 & 3pm, Location: Portland Art Museum
Building on the mythological idea of Eve eating the apple in the Garden of Eden, this is a solo dance performance that walks the fault line between rejected female stereotypes and embodied expression, wrestling with first impressions, assumptions and associations, motherhood, sensationalism, emotionality, sexuality, an image/time­bound body, and the body in the present moment. Sound Score and technical support by Luke Wyland

Aaron Lish?, Sweet Nothings and Other Stories.
Noon – 5pm, Location: along the Willamette Riverfront trail at Ankeny (near the Bill Naito Legacy Fountain)
To celebrate the Willamette River, the public is invited to share stories, poetry, songs, etc. with the River as receiver / audience. There will be an installation at the Riverwalk overlook just south of the Saturday Market that will conduct your voices down to the water. The site is right near the Bill Naito Legacy Fountain, which memorializes the names of those who helped make Portland what it is today. But the Willamette River is not on that list of names. “Sweet Nothings and Other Stories” has been created to celebrate the River in a new and different way, where your sharing is a form of gift to the River.

Jess Perlitz Rock moving rocks 11am-4pm, Location: The route for the rock will begin near the Hawthorne Bridge moving along the Eastbank Esplanade, over the Tilikum Crossing, ending at the Art Museum.
For a day, along the west shore of the Willamette River in Portland, the artist will be a rock and will move other rocks, engaging with the surrounding world. Inspired by landscape and landscaping, landmarks and monuments, natural disaster and our never ending attempts for control, this piece will be an action that unfolds over the course of 5 hours. The r?ock w?ill have arms and legs available so that it may move other similar objects, rest, and engage with people as needed. The rock does not talk. But it does try to communicate through music, action, and presence.

DeAngelo Raines, The Right Hand of Fellowship
Noon – 4pm, Location: South Parks Blocks at the Lincoln Statue
With the belief that barriers to identification can be overcome, DeAngelo Raines proposes a performative social engagement installation to exhibit multiple handshakes from 7 different archetypes of the adult African-American Male.

Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young)
The Division of Identification
All Day, Location: Throughout Park Blocks
October 24, 2015 -­ January 17, 2016 during Paradise ?exhibition at Portland Art Museum. DIVISION OF IDENTIFICATION

These selected portraits are sourced from a volume of police arrest mug shots found in the City of Portland Archives collections. Created by the Division of Identification, now the Police Identification Division, the photos date between 1947 and 1954. The body of works is presented as a photographic installation in public space that unmasks issues of humanity often camouflaged by social stereotypes and ill-repute of “the other.” The large scale black and white photographic portraits have been installed throughout the Park Blocks of Downtown Portland the same historic locations where people have been arrested for “vagrancy” or other social crimes. You can find a limited selection of the black and white prints for sale online. “The Division of Identification” is part of Fallen Fruit of Portland presented by Caldera through a Creative Heights grant from the Oregon Community Foundation. Caldera students will interview the public and each other about reactions to the portraits for broadcast on KBOO.

Fallen Fruit, Fruit Magazine Issue #2, PDX
Noon – 4pm, Location: Portland Art Museum
In one day the public, along with David Burns and Austin Young, will use fruit and its metaphors to create a limited edition contemporary culture magazine. Fruit Magazine‘s Portland­ specific content will feature native languages and visual vocabularies that reflect Portland’s diversity. “Fruit Magazine” will be published as a downloadable PDF accessible at w?ww.CalderaArts.org/FallenFruitPDX? and w?ww.fallenfruit.org/fallenfruitmagazine?

CELEBRATE The EXHIBITION OPENINGS:

Fallen Fruit, Paradise
October 24, 2015 ­ January 17, 2016
Location: Portland Art Museum
This exhibition, on display in the Portland Art Museum’s Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Sculpture Court October 24 through January 17, More information can be found here.

Caldera Youth, The Culture of We
Location: Wieden+Kennedy Gallery 224 NW 13th Ave
October 24th – ­ November 13
The Culture of We showcases the power of creativity through the voices of Caldera students. Inspired by Caldera’s environmental themes, student work displayed reflects unique youth perspectives, reactions, and inspirations surrounding “The Geography of We”. Artwork is installed salon­ style, and will create a dialogue of how the individual contributes to community. This exhibition highlights Caldera’s focus on the integration of art and nature and powerful work with special guest artists like Fallen Fruit.

UPCOMING: RSVP NOW!

Urban Fruit Trails, PDX
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Locations: TBD and located throughout Portland
Hey Portland! Anyone can participate! If you have space to plant near a sidewalk, can care for the tree, and include it on the Urban Fruit Trail map, please email us! info @ fallenfruit.org. Caldera and Fallen Fruit are producing an installation and public planting of approximately 200 fruit trees in community gardens, private homes, churches and businesses that allow public access to fruit. Caldera youth, their families, Caldera’s Arts Partner middle schools, along with the greater community of Portland will celebrate family stories and histories, local facts and historic lore along the trails through signs at tree sites and with an interactive online Urban Fruit Trails map. Trees will be geo­tagged for anyone to digitally view art, read stories, and look at videos inspired by the apple trees. P?artners: P?ortland Fruit Tree Project, Friends of Trees, Know Your City, Oregon Food Bank, Portland Art Museum, Root Pouch, Concordia University, Open School North and others to be announced.

Oregon Community Foundation Creative Heights Initiative Award

About Caldera
Established in 1996 by Dan Wieden, co-founder of the Portland, Oregon-based international ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, Caldera is a nonprofit organization that supports youth with limited opportunities through long-term mentoring and arts and nature programming, as well as provides fully subsidized residencies to adult artists. It provides year-round youth mentoring through 12 Arts Partner middle schools (six in Portland and six Central Oregon), high school programming, and summer camp at its Arts Center on Blue Lake near Sisters, Oregon. More information at www.CalderaArts.org.

Elizabeth Quinn is the Creative Director for Caldera. Previous to her work at Caldera, she was the Founding Editor of High Desert Journal, a publication that strives for a deeper understanding of the interior West through arts and literature. She also helped found Playa, a residency program in Summer Lake, Oregon, and was the Director of The Dalles Art Association. Having worked across Oregon, Elizabeth has developed in-depth knowledge of arts communities throughout the state and an understanding of the unique needs of artists from diverse backgrounds.

About Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative
Through a four­ year initiative (2014­2017), the Oregon Community Foundation’s Creative Heights Initiative provides grants to help arts and culture organizations take strategic risks in the creation and dissemination of their work in Oregon, provide unique opportunities for Oregonians to experience innovative arts and culture, and to increase Oregon’s cultural visibility and vitality. more information here.

Plant a Tree with Fallen Fruit
It’s part of The Value of Food
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2015
12 PM – 2 PM, PULPIT GREEN
St. John the Divine

Los Angeles collective Fallen Fruit, comprised of David Burns and Austin Young, want you—yes, you—to help them plant some small apple trees along the one of the sides of the Cathedral’s Pulpit Green as part of “Temptation,” their multimedia piece for The Value of Food.

This is an invitation from Burns and Young to “share and explore the meaning of community and collaboration.” They have devoted many years to similar tree mapping and planting projects in dozens of other cities, including Copenhagen, Denmark; Boulder, Colorado; Greensboro, North Carolina; and Houston, Texas.
Bring a bottle of water, comfortable clothes, gardening gloves, and a pointed shovel (if you have one) to participate. Everyone will congregate on the Cathedral’s Upper Driveway (between 111th and 112th Streets east of Amsterdam Avenue) at 12 pm.

The Value of Food: Sustaining a Green Planet
The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, New York
1047 Amsterdam Avenue @ 112th Street New York, NY 10025

October 6, 2015 – April 3, 2016 (Opening October 6 from 7:30pm on)

The Venue
Saint John the Divine, The Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of New York is proud to present The Value of Food: Sustaining a Green Planet, a contemporary art exhibition guest-curated by Kirby Gookin and Robin Kahn. The Cathedral is the world’s largest Gothic structure visited by more than one million people annually. With its long history of engagement with issues of social justice, the environment, support for the arts, and community empowerment, it is a unifying center of intellectual leadership and an exceptional resource center of educational and cultural exhibitions and programs.

The Exhibition
The Value of Food explores the dynamic and organic materiality of food and its integral role in sustaining human life. The artists in this exhibition work with food as a form of social engagement. Although their subjects and methodology vary, they each explore the intersection of food, art, commerce and community in order to engage the exhibition’s unifying theme: food justice.

We will also be presenting a variety of educational programs, workshops and evening events, some in collaboration with Mother Jones, Magnum Foundation and Grace Communications Foundation, as well as with artists and guest speakers.

Pull up a seat and join us at The Tables. Food becomes a meal only when it is shared.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Suzanne Anker
Stefani Bardin
Anna-Sophie Berger
Pascal Bernier
Mike Bidlo
Matt Black
Mel Chin
Ines Doujak
Eating in Public
Coleen Fitzgibbon
Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young)
Fredericka Foster
Nancy Hwang
Christian Jankowski
Robin Kahn
Alison Knowles
Larry Miller
Vik Muniz
Jan Mun
Peter Nadin
Naoto Nakagawa
Tom Otterness
Claire Pentecost
Alexis Rockman
Christy Rupp
Laura Stein
Tattfoo Tan
Nigel Van Wieck
Kara Walker
Linda Weintraub
Peter Lamborn Wilson

With documentation and ephemera by additional artists involved in these many issues, including: Agnes Denes, Fluxus, Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark, Fritz Haeg, Corita Kent, Christien Meindertsma, Dieter Roth, Daniel Spoerri, Superflex, Rirkrit Tiravanija, among others.

For more information please contact:
Kirby Gookin: KirbyGookin@yahoo.com Robin Kahn: RobinKahn@yahoo.com

“Lemonade Stand!” A public participatory project by Fallen Fruit (David Burns & Austin Young)
Presented in association with To Live and Dine in L.A. at Los Angeles Public Library.
“Lemonade Stand”, a public participatory artwork by Fallen Fruit exploring ideas of temporary community and new forms of public. During this special presentation on the steps of Central Library, draw a self-portrait onto a lemon and receive a glass of organic lemonade. The lemon self-portraits will collectively form a group portrait of everyone who participated, illustrating some of the archetypes that construct community. “when life gives you lemons…”

Saturday, Aug 29, 2015 | 11:00am – 2:00pm
Maguire Gardens, Central Library
Lemonade Stand!
A public participatory project by Fallen Fruit (David Burns & Austin Young)
Presented in association with To Live and Dine in L.A.

Join us for Lemonade Stand, a public participatory artwork by Fallen Fruit exploring ideas of temporary community and new forms of public. During this special presentation on the steps of Central Library, draw a self-portrait onto a lemon and receive a glass of organic lemonade. The lemon self-portraits will collectively form a group portrait of everyone who participated, illustrating some of the archetypes that construct community. Additionally, as participants are asked to record stories about neighborhood and family, the Lemonade Stand will activate the phrase… “when life gives you lemons…”

MOTHERPATCH by Fallen Fruit:
with the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) and the people from YORK.
Saturday, August 22nd from 10 AM to 12 PM
The Harvest Celebration of Motherpatch, a new public art project by Fallen Fruit .

There was free watermelons for EVERYONE in York, a watermelon race, seed spitting contest. and we wrote down memories and advice we got from our MOTHERS. Everyone was encouraged to ‘Spit your seeds’ so that watermelons will continue to grow throughout York!

Motherpatch is the largest public watermelon patch in the world, containing over 30 global varieties of watermelons. The project is Fallen Fruit’s collaboration with the CCA and the people of Sumter County that began in 2012, and has unfolded through ongoing conversation, creation and collaboration.

This event was made possible by funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Visual Artists Network/National Performance Network, ArtPlace America, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama and the generous contributions of our individual sponsors.

Fallen Fruit ®
photos by ©Fallen Fruit

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work.

Please join us at the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) outside on Avenue A on Saturday, August 22nd from 10 AM to 12 PM for the Harvest Celebration of Motherpatch, a new public art project by the Fallen Fruit.

Activities will include free watermelons for all (while supplies last,) a watermelon race (with prizes!!), and music!! Please also join us in sharing memories and advice you got from your mother, as we honor mothers with these delicious seeded watermelons!

This event is free and open to the public! All are welcome! Free watermelons! Free food! Free fun! Come and join us and remember to “Spit your seeds!”

Motherpatch is the largest public watermelon patch in the world, containing over 30 global varieties of watermelons. The project is Fallen Fruit’s collaboration with the CCA and the people of Sumter County that began in 2012, and has unfolded through ongoing conversation, creation and collaboration.

This event is made possible by funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Visual Artists Network/National Performance Network, ArtPlace America, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama and the generous contributions of our individual sponsors.

JOIN US! for a Public Fruit Jam
Sunday, August 16, 11am – 2pm

One Colorado Courtyard – 41 Hugus Alley, Pasadena CA 626.564.1066

*This fruit-filled event is supported in part by Whole Foods Market

Join us for a fun and friendly day of making jam and new pals! Fallen Fruit’s Public Fruit Jam is a wonderful social and community-building event that’s perfect for kids, adults, families and even first dates.

Folks are invited to drop by the courtyard anytime between 11am – 2pm for the Fruit Jam. Everyone is invited to contribute home-grown or picked public fruit to the cause.

Selecting fruit goodies from the communal fruit table, guests will join Jam Teams of 3 to 5 people. (New friends!) Your team’s jam ingredients can be anything you bring along or score at the fruit table. Fallen Fruit encourages experimental jams, such as basil guava or lemon pepper jelly. You can even add a kick of jalapeno or bite with some fresh ginger. Almost all fruits can be jammed, even bananas – if you dare!

Each jam session runs approximately 45 minutes from cutting to preserving. Fallen Fruit staffers will be on hand to help out. In the end, you will have jam to keep, swap and contribute to the tasting table where you can savor the fruits of your labors. And who knows – you may also leave with a new BFF or adorable meet-cute story!

We are grateful to Whole Foods Market for supporting this event (and local farmers!).

Fallen Fruit invite you to experience your City as a fruitful place, to collectively re-imagine the function of public participation and urban space, and to explore the meaning of community through creating and sharing new and abundant resources. Fruit Trees! Share your fruit! Change the world! Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young. Since 2013, David and Austin have continued the collaborative work. Fallen Fruit began by mapping fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles. The collaboration has expanded to include serialized public projects and site-specific installations and happenings in various cities around the world.

About One Colorado:

One Colorado is a collection of 17 historic buildings housing a curated mix of nationally acclaimed retailers and designers, unique local merchants, inventive restaurants and a boutique cinema. A full city block located between Colorado, Union, Delacey and Fair Oaks, One Colorado is the retail centerpiece of Old Pasadena and favorite casual gathering place for the greater community, with public events hosted year-round in its central courtyard.

Power Of People, Power Of Place

-Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young)

We find meaning in the things we take with us. When we move to another apartment, city, state, country, or continent, we bring objects with us; letters, books, photographs, works of art, heirlooms, tchotchkes and seemingly random things to remind us of who we are as a culture, a family, and as an individual.   In time, when these objects are left behind and rediscovered – they can they tell intimate stories about people and place.  Perhaps if we let go of all of these familiar things, we would lose our identity and instead merge with the existing culture of the land. -Fallen Fruit

LOS ANGELES-BASED COLLECTIVE FALLEN FRUIT EXPLORES OMAHA HISTORY AT  BEMIS CENTER

July 12, 2015, Omaha, NE — Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts presents Power of People, Power of Place, an exhibition project with Los Angeles–based art collaborative Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young).  On view August 6 to October 10, an opening reception will be held on Thursday, August 6 from 7pm to 9pm. Prior to the opening reception, Fallen Fruit will participate in Bemis Center’s monthly Art Talk program where they will discuss their research and installation process.

Power of People, Power of Place is the latest in Fallen Fruit’s ongoing series of projects that use fruit as a material to investigate culture and explore social engagement. The concept for this project was inspired by a part of the Great Plains Black History Museum collection that is being temporarily stored on the fourth floor of Bemis Center. During a research trip to Omaha in April of 2015, Fallen Fruit began to mine this collection. “As we opened boxes, some of them molded from years of dampness, the objects began to construct a complex picture about the things we leave behind,” said Fallen Fruit. “In time, the objects that once held meaning to us are rediscovered by others, telling them intimate stories about people and place.”

Continuing their research, Fallen Fruit visited other collections and archives in Omaha, including the Joslyn Museum, El Museo Latino, The Schrager Collection, and Omaha Public Library. Burns and Young have borrowed a range of objects from these and other Omaha collections and archives and arranged them into an exhibition that creates an installation artwork that becomes a portrait of the city of Omaha.

Fallen Fruit’s eclectic mix of borrowed books, letters, tchotchkes, domestic objects, and works of art (including pieces from Bemis Center’s own collection of artworks by past artists-in-residence) is assembled against the backdrop of their signature fruit themed wallpaper. For each exhibition project, Burns and Young design a custom wallpaper featuring fruit(s) specific to the location. Here, the artists take the apple as their focus, probing its rich symbolism and regional provenance, dating back to the Oregon Trail. “In the scope of our work, we have discovered that culture as well as fruit moves around the world with people,” said the artists. “Inspired by the AppleJack Festival we learned that apples were planted during western expansion because they are easy to store in winter and grow naturally all across the United States without much care.”

Items from the Great Plains Black History Museum- photograph by Fallen Fruit

Burns and Young draw on an excerpt from the January 1877 issue of Nebraska Farmer:

“Now, in comparing Nebraska apples with the products of other states, their superiority was evident in at least three particulars. First, their flavor was superior. Apples from regions that were comparatively insipid, when grown in Nebraska, were found to be finely flavored. This was the case with all the samples tested. Second, the color was superior. This was observed by everyone who visited the Nebraska department, and every one who had an eye for the beautiful had a word of praise for these fine apples. Third, the Nebraska apples were exceptionally free from parasitic fungous growths. All the apples from other states that I examined, including those from Canada, were more or less affected by fungi.”

To complement the exhibition Bemis Center has partnered with Joslyn’s Kent Bellows Mentoring Program to realize Urban Fruit Trails, Fallen Fruit’s decentralized public planting project that includes sites in various cities around the world. Kent Bellows students, who represent various Omaha high schools and zip codes, will plant apple trees throughout the city, in effect creating “a walkable network of fruit trails” that can be shared and enjoyed by anyone. “We hope these youth develop a long-term relationship to art in their city by virtue of seeing their participation reflected in the landscape for years to come,” says Nicole J. Caruth, Bemis Center’s new Artistic Director for Exhibitions and Public Engagement.

Caruth counts community building as another goal of the project. “As a recent transplant to Omaha I’m struck by the segregation here,” she said. “Urban Fruit Trails emphasizes sharing and connecting rather than divisions, and it’s a wonderful example of the role that contemporary artists can play in breaking down barriers, or at least in facilitating a shift in how we think about boundaries.”

Burns and Young will work with Kent Bellows Studio students to plant trees on the Bemis grounds in August. The students will complete the plantings in October 2015, in conjunction with a special Bemis Center Open House/Open Studios event, and the organization’s first ever themed residency on the future food production and consumption.

from the Great Plains Black History Museum- photograph by Fallen Fruit

About the Artists

Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration originally conceived in 2004 by David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young. Since 2013, David Burns and Austin Young have continued the collaborative work.

Fallen Fruit began in Los Angeles with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property. Fallen Fruit uses cartography and geography as an indexical platform to generate serialized and site-specific works of art that often embrace public participation. The work of Fallen Fruit includes photographic portraits, experimental documentary videos, public art installations, and curatorial projects. Using fruit as a method of reframing the familiar, Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood, and new forms of citizenship. From protests to proposals for new urban green space, Fallen Fruit’s work aims to reconfigure the relationship of sharing and explore understandings of public and private, as well as real world and real time. They consider fruit to be many things; it’s a subject and object at the same time it is aesthetic. Fruit often triggers a childhood memory; it’s emotional and familiar. Everyone is an expert on the flavor of a banana. Much of this work is linked to ideas of place and family, and much of these works echo a sense of connectedness with something very primal—our capacity to share with others. Fallen Fruit uses fruit as a common denominator to change the way you see the world.

Power of People, Power of Place and Urban Fruit Trails are presented in part by generous support from Lincoln Financial Foundation.

About Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts

The mission of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts is to provide residency opportunities to artists from around the world, so that they may develop new ideas, expand their practice and engage the community. Bemis Center has been recognized as one of the “Top 10 residencies around the globe” by ArtInfo, and Jane Alexander, the former head of the National Endowment for the Arts, has called the Bemis Center “one of the great treasures of its kind in the country.”

Bemis Online

Website: http://www.bemiscenter.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bemiscenter
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bemiscenter
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/bemiscenter

Fallen Fruit Online

Website: https://fallenfruit.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fallenfruit
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fallenfruit
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/fallen_fruit

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
724 South 12th Street
Omaha, NE 68102
12th and Leavenworth
Admission and Parking: FREE
Phone: 402.341.7130
Fax: 402.341.9791
info@bemiscenter.org
Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

¡Estas Como Mango! is an exhibition of contemporary art and public practice by the Los Angeles-based artist collective Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young). ¡Estas Como Mango! is their first solo project in Mexico.The exhibition is presented as a series of projects that together form a critical body of contemporary artworks that explore the relationship of local culture and tourist culture to the geographical area of Puerto Vallarta. ¡Estas Como Mango! is focused upon two aspects of Puerto Vallarta history: first is the notion of communal land and the privatization and commercialization of these communal lands; second is these ideas of use of land in relation to tourist culture.
¡Estas Como Mango! is a collection of site-specific art works created during a residency with OPC, including a Puerto Vallarta-themed fruit wall paper that is the background of the gallery exhibition; a limited-edition magazine with artworks made by local Puerto Vallarta community members; and the planting of 19 trees around OIas Altas creating an Urban Fruit Trail.   Additional works of art explore aesthetics that are specific to Puerto Vallarta and are relational to the themes common within this exhibition.The works of art that Fallen Fruit creates respond to people and place and use local fruit as a connector. In the case of Puerto Vallarta, Fallen Fruit discovered that the mango is paramount to local culture. Mangos were imported to this tropical beach town and form part of its foundation in terms of urban planning, infrastructure, and culture.
OPC and Fallen Fruit would like to thank the Barlow Family for the generous use of the building; we would also like to thank William Hobi, Catherine Oppio, Mexlend, and the many supporters of the Kickstarer campaign who made the ¡Estas como mango! exhibition possible. We would also like to acknowledge Bob Price and the Vallarta Botanical Gardens for the generous donation of the fruit trees.