<h4> <img class="aligncenter wp-image-8450 size-large" src="http://tallerpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Dissonance2-Slider-1024x394.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="394" /></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">September 15 - October 28, 2017</h4>
Known for his figurative sculptures and totemic forms, sculptor Miguel Antonio Horn charts new artistic territory in <em>Dissonance</em>, his site-specific installation at Taller Puertorriqueño. Using shaped and unshaped found objects, plated planes, and recorded sound, <em>Dissonance</em> explores the boundaries of power and powerlessness, oppression and resistance.

[caption id="attachment_8451" align="alignleft" width="155"]<a href="http://tallerpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Dissonance-Pans.jpg"><img class="wp-image-8451" src="http://tallerpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Dissonance-Pans-300x300.jpg" alt="Dissonance Installation" width="155" height="155" /></a> An installation with audio[/caption]

Using mangled and misshapen pots and pans, he evokes the “cacerolazos” of Venezuela, protests in which citizens take to the streets and bang pots and pans in response to the crises currently gripping the country. The cacerolazos epitomize the public’s outcry, while the curved plated planes allude to the shields used by the police to subdue the crowds. Horn was inspired in part by similarities he perceived between the protests in Venezuela and news stories here in the United States about police brutality and their response to protesters with military hardware and tactics. The sound design, which was done in collaboration with the artist and musician Daniel de Jesús, gives the work resonance beyond its physical form.

Horn encourages visitors to walk through the installation and respond to the objects and environment. Unlike his other works, the spectator is enveloped by the work, including the evocative soundscape created by de Jesús. Visitors are even allowed to clang the pots with the kitchen utensils.

As an artist, Horn regards himself as an impartial observer who nonetheless is troubled by the increasing disparity between ordinary people and unyielding political systems that supposedly represent them. Fascinated by deterioration and decay as a means to delineate time and impermanence, Horn experiments with composition, scale, place, and the distortion of form and volume to create experiences that resonate with the viewer. Horn’s art-making process is intuitive and illustrates what he describes as his “essential search to communicate” and to “convey introspection and struggle.”

A native of the Philadelphia region, Miguel Antonio Horn has Colombian and Venezuelan roots. He received a certificate in 2006 from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and apprenticed for five years with Mexican artist Javier Marín. Horn has exhibited his large-format sculptures in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Tamaulipas, Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, University of the Arts, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and as part of the Vancouver Biennale. His public art commissions are on view throughout the Philadelphia area, Canada, and Mexico. He maintains a studio at the West Philadelphia artist-run workspace, Traction Company, where he organizes exhibitions and contributes to outreach and development. He is currently constructing a monumental sculpture, <em>Contrafuerte</em>, for Center City near the Reading Terminal Market and Convention Center as part of the Percent for Art Program.

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