Paul Ramírez Jonas was born in Pomona, California in 1965 and raised in Honduras. Educated at Brown University (BA, 1987) and Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 1989), Ramírez Jonas, currently lives and works in Ithaca NY. Over the last thirty years Ramírez Jonas has created works that range from large-scale public installations and monumental sculptures to intimate drawings, performances and videos. Through his practice he seeks to challenge the definitions of art and the public and to engineer active audience participation and exchange. His 2010 Creative Time project, Key to the City, for example, involved 20,000 participants and centered around a key as a vehicle for exploring social contracts pertaining to trust, access, and belonging. Keys have featured repeatedly in his work as symbols of access and exclusion, public and private ownership. Multiples based on everyday objects such as coins also are a reoccurring motif allowing the artist to question notions of value, circulation and societal rituals or behaviors.
