Conceptualist Permissions for Teacher Posture

Jorge Lucero's publication Conceptualist Permissions for Teacher Posture was made on the occasion of the exhibition I Do/ We Do/ You Do at Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver, curated by Cecily Cullen and Katie Taft. The original drawings from the project were exhibited at the Center from May 18 to August 5, 2023. Funding for the exhibition was provided by Center for Visual Art, MSU Denver donors. Conceptualist Permissions for Teacher Posture is a selection of the "permissions" Jorge Lucero has taken from other creative practitioners for his own practice. These permissions can be understood as general recommendations (or open-ended directives) for the modification of a teacher's pedagogical posture in relation to the materiality of schooling. Teacher as Conceptual Artist is a lifelong project of learning how to work through the materiality of schooling for the sake of participating in contemporary art and educational discourses simultaneously. The project proposes answers to the questions: How can I be an artist who works with school as material? and How can I be a teacher as conceptual artist? By examining the overlap of teaching and conceptual art, Lucero has identified countless instances where what happens in schools turns into a pliable material that can be used for artistic inquiry and expression. This work sometimes happens with others and sometimes it is visible, but more often than not, the work happens-like teaching-in the "less nothing" invisible realm that Lucy Lippard identified in her germinal essay "the dematerialization of the art object".