Domestic in A Foreign Sense is a solo exhibition by José Lerma featuring large-scale portraiture created in thick impasto and limited brush strokes.

The title of the exhibition is a transposition of the phrase “foreign in a domestic sense,” which is how US Supreme Court Justice Henry Brown described Puerto Rico in his 1901 decision that placed the island as neither fully part of the United States nor an independent country. This contradictory statement led to years of uncertainty for Puerto Rico.

This paradoxical nature is apparent in the artist’s paintings, which feature copious amounts of paint but few brushstrokes, challenging viewers’ expectations of both painting and portraiture. His work uniquely collapses historical and autobiographical elements, creating pieces that are part art history and part personal mythology.

With a career spanning over two decades, Lerma’s return to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is particularly significant, as it was here that he had his first museum exhibition in the 1999 Wisconsin Triennial after earning his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

José Lerma (b. 1971, Spain; lives and works in San Juan, Puerto Rico) received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2002. He has had over twenty solo exhibitions at galleries such as Kavi Gupta in Chicago, IL, Galerie Xavier Hufkens in Brussels, Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York, NY, and at museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. His works are represented in numerous collections, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Saatchi Collection in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Lerma served as an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2009 through 2023.

Image: Jose Lerma, “Dreamer”, 2002-3. Oil, 19 3/4 x 19 1/2 inches. Gift of Nancy Mladenoff and J.J. Murphy, Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. © Jose Lerma.