Alexandre
Arrechea
Miami, FL
Born and raised in Trinidad, Cuba, and educated at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, Alex Arrechea is a sculptor, painter and video artist who divides his time between New York, Madrid, Havana and Miami. Arrechea’s work is often based on visual metaphors that connect urban design with systems of power and industry, as in the case of his Swope Park sculpture linking two symbols of Kansas City’s economic prosperity and cultural identity: Meat and Music.
View work description on the next tab.
The Village at Swope Park
Viewing Hours:
Unlimited Viewing
Alexandre Arrechea
Meat and Music
Medium: Aluminum and Bronze
Not every product that is produced and consumed within a city qualifies as a cultural marker of that city’s identity, but for Kansas City, meat and music serve as important exceptions. Since its heyday in the 1930s and ‘40s, Kansas City jazz and blues transformed how the rest of the world listened to American music, and its rapid economic growth as a center for processing and packing meat gave rise to its present-day fame as a Mecca of barbecue. Alex Arrechea’s freestanding sculpture of a giant meat thermometer sporting faux piano keys in place of temperature markings consolidates these two symbols of civic pride into a single hybrid object. Born and raised in Trinidad, Cuba, and educated at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, Arrechea is a sculptor, painter and video artist who currently divides his time between New York, Madrid, Havana and Miami. His work is often based on visual metaphors that connect urban design with systems of power and industry, as in the case with Meat and Music, which underscores how the individual pursuit of pleasure and the collective search economic prosperity can sometimes merge into one.
The Village at Swope Park
Viewing Hours:
Unlimited Viewing
Get Directions