Skip Navigation

Fear and Denial

Pepón Osorio

Contemporary Art

On View:
The proportions of this piece by the prominent installation artist Pepón Osorio are rather ambiguous: the two giant stuffed cats seem to be too large for the narrow table on which they sit. This incongruity reflects the artist’s recollections of visiting his mother’s apartment, filled with knickknacks and figurines, when he was an art student. The objects were in sharp contrast with the aesthetic values of the art world he was entering, and his conflicting feelings of repulsion and attraction assumed giant dimensions in his mind.
MEDIUM Mixed media
DATES 1997
DIMENSIONS 92 x 96 x 32 in. (233.7 x 243.8 x 81.3 cm)  (show scale)
COLLECTIONS Contemporary Art
ACCESSION NUMBER 2003.5
CREDIT LINE Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr., by exchange
MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
CAPTION Pepón Osorio (Puerto Rican, born 1955). Fear and Denial, 1997. Mixed media, 92 x 96 x 32 in. (233.7 x 243.8 x 81.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr., by exchange, 2003.5. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, CUR.2003.5_installation.jpg)
IMAGE installation, CUR.2003.5_installation.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2015
"CUR" at the beginning of an image file name means that the image was created by a curatorial staff member. These study images may be digital point-and-shoot photographs, when we don\'t yet have high-quality studio photography, or they may be scans of older negatives, slides, or photographic prints, providing historical documentation of the object.
RIGHTS STATEMENT © Pepón Osorio
The Brooklyn Museum holds a non-exclusive license to reproduce images of this work of art from the rights holder named here. The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org. If you wish to contact the rights holder for this work, please email copyright@brooklynmuseum.org and we will assist if we can.
RECORD COMPLETENESS
Not every record you will find here is complete. More information is available for some works than for others, and some entries have been updated more recently. Records are frequently reviewed and revised, and we welcome any additional information you might have.