Gallery Wendi Norris proudly congratulates Julio César Morales on receiving a Joan Mitchell Foundation 2020 Painters and Sculptors Grant.
Every year, the Joan Mitchell Foundation awards 25 artists with $25,000 in unrestricted funds. In this moment of profound change and contraction within the arts landscape, the Foundation felt it was particularly important to continue with this annual grants cycle, providing artists with flexible financial support as well as the recognition essential to career progress.
"The Foundation first launched the Painters & Sculptors Grants 27 years ago with the vision to support and nurture the lives and careers of working artists, recognizing that creative endeavor is best supported through robust and unrestricted financial support. This year, the $625,000 in unrestricted funds awarded through the Painters & Sculptors Grants builds on the nearly $1,000,000 in relief funding that the Foundation will have given by year's end to the coalition efforts Artist Relief and Creative Response NOLA, and direct aid to former grant recipients in need. All of these efforts are made possible by artist Joan Mitchell's foresight to establish, in her will, a Foundation that serves the ongoing and changing needs of working artists," said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. "We are delighted to be able to recognize the artistic achievements of our new grantees and to continue to offer important lines of support, especially in a year that has brought particular challenges to the artistic community."
ABOUT JULIO CÉSAR MORALES
By deploying a range of media and visual strategies, Julio César Morales investigates issues of migration, underground economies, and labor on personal and global scales. Morales' practice explores diverse mediums specific to each project or body of work. He has painted watercolor illustrations that diagram human trafficking methods, employed the DJ turntable, produced video and time-based pieces, and reenacted a famous meal-all to elucidate social interactions and political perspectives.
Morales' artwork has been shown at venues internationally, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; MUCA Roma, Mexico City; Prospect.3 Biennale, New Orleans, LA; Lyon Biennale, France, and Istanbul Biennale, Turkey. His work is in private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; The Kadist Foundation, San Francisco and Paris, and the Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt, among others. In May 2018, Morales was awarded the Phoenix Art Museum's Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Award, which culminated in a major solo exhibition in 2019.
In early 2021, Morales will have work on view at the Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles as part of Los Jaichakers (Julio César Morales and Eamon Ore-Giron) will be included in Sonidx: Audio Culture in Latinx Art at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles.
