WED. NOV. 8th (7-9pm)
In conjunction, the gallery will present a panel discussion with Eileen Truax, author of Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation’s Fight for Their American Dream. Dreamers concerns the generation brought to the United States as children—and now fighting to remain here legally. The panel will also include DreamersYunuen Bonaparte & Adrián Gonzalez. (free tickets)
FRI. NOV. 17th (7-9pm)
Comedian and Dreamer Johan Miranda presents his solo performance “ALIENATED” – addressing the topics of immigration and DACA in this one-night-only standup special. (free tickets)
“South of the Border” is jointly curated by Liz Gordon (The Loft at Liz’s) and curator, art historian, and civic activist Isabel Rojas-Williams (former Executive Director of the Mural Conservancy Los Angeles).
South of the Border is part of the Participating Gallery Program of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty.
Let’s face it, Inglewood is not the type of neighborhood you go to for art shows. Other than the Inglewood Open Studios art walk, which happens once a year in places like 1019 West and the Beacon Arts Building, there isn’t a scene like in Downtown Los Angeles or adjacent Culver City. But there is a new kid on the block that is challenging this perception and bringing multicultural awareness and art that reflects people and ideas from the surrounding area. Residency Art Gallery, which sits in the historic Downtown Inglewood corridor, is carving out a creative space for dialogue and representation, in a metropolis that is constantly reinventing itself via new development, and in the process disappearing entire peoples and communities.
Residency’s next exhibition, which is part of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time LA/LA Initiative, Barrio Logos: Displacement and Vanishing Iconography, parallels the gallery’s ideology of erasure. And with such an ambitious initiative that seeks to embrace the Latino community across Los Angeles, the Getty glossed over the entire LAX area, with the exception of Residency. According to professor Raul Homero Villa of Occidental College, “In our post-modernist present, the threat is more insidious and dispersed, as the invisible hand of real estate speculation catalyzes a piece-meal but cumulative displacement of working-class Latino households, especially renters, through residential and commercial gentrification.” Look at all major cities across California and you will observe that cumulative displacement is at the core of a 21st century American crisis. Homelessness in Los Angeles has reached an all-record high, partially related to massive evictions, and there is not a week that goes by in which the Los Angeles Times does not report on the affordability emergency that is plaguing our city. Bottom line is that working-class people are finding it extremely difficult to live in Los Angeles, let alone buy a house. Major cities have become a hub for luxury living and creative economic work, yet, they still rely on service labor to run the dream machine. And along with the displacement of people is the removal and vanishing iconography, such as public murals, graffiti, and neighborhood roll calls that once reflected specific demographic groups. Curated by artist Oscar Magallanes, Barrio Logos seeks to reclaim the imagery and iconography of the barrio that has constantly been fined, criminalized, and white-washed, while its practitioners have suffered extreme social disorganization such as mass incarceration, deportation, civil injunctions, and other such racialized phenomenon.
But, Magallanes’ exhibition moves beyond the simple protest plea to a more philosophical concern. Barrio Logos, which runs through December 10th, interrogates what part of barrio culture is allowed to get appropriated by the dominant culture, and what part of it remains within the host community as centralized identity, without being criminalized. Moreover, Magallanes seeks to balance political/social realism and conceptual art, within the constraints of academia. He asks – How can an artist work within specified social justice, without thinking about the larger marketplace of the artworld? For this reason, he has collected a group of artists that represent many forms of resistance, such as the style and clothing of John Carlos De Luna, the phenomenology of Patrick Martinez, the heroic paisas of EL MAC, and the displacement of people from everyday objects in photography by Gustavo Martinez. Other artists include: Adriana Corral, Pablo Cristi, Aaron D. Estrada, Ofelia Marquez, and Vincent Valdez. Barrio Logos: Displacement and Vanishing Iconography opens to the general public on October 7th, with a block party reception from 1-6pm.
A journey through life, love and death, Arte y Almas: Día de Los Muertos 2017 (Art & Souls: Day of the Dead 2017) features contemporary installations by La Sonrisa de La Muerte and Lapiztola from Mexico and California artists Lurac and Oscar Magallanes.
Opening at the Museum’s Dia de Los Muertos Fiesta 2017 (Day of the Dead Party 2017) on Fri., Oct. 13, 2017, the exhibit explores the Mexican cultural tradition of honoring deceased loved ones each year on November 1 and 2 by creating calaveras de azúcar (sugar skulls), altares de muertos (altars of the dead) and ofrendas (offerings), which has evolved from the Aztecs to modern day Mexico and California.
Members of the public are also invited to celebrate friends and family with a remembrance in the exhibit’s accompanying Community Altar Oct. 7 through Dec. 30, 2017.
As South Los Angeles and its surrounding communities continue to face the threat of gentrification, both community residents and artists have begun to feel the effects of displacement.
As a result, a group of artists, including Patrick Martinez and John Carlos “Barrio Dandy” De Luna will be displaying their work in an upcoming exhibition titled, “Barrio Logos: Displacement and Vanishing Iconography,” aimed at preserving the legacy of Chicano/o resistance in a city whose Chicano style and aesthetics have been appropriated around the world.
Located at the Residency gallery, directed by Rick Garzon, in the rapidly changing city of Inglewood, Barrio Logos is part of a larger art initiative titled Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, which is hosting a range of art events and exhibitions aimed at creating a dialogue between Los Angeles and Latin America art.
“Barrio Logos is the only PST LA/LA participating exhibition taking place within South Central Los Angeles.”
Curated by Oscar Magallanes, the upcoming exhibit takes place in a city that is 50 percent Latino, and serves as the backdrop for popular HBO series, “Insecure.” Magallanes urges viewers to think about the historical impact of displacement in the context of a Chicana and Chicano legacy that stems back to the mid-19th century Mexican-American war.
Additionally, the upcoming exhibit, Magallanes explained to mitú over the phone, builds on the book, titled, “Barrio Logos,” written by author, Raul Villa, which explores how California Chicanos have used expressive culture to oppose community-destroying forces like urban renewal programs and massive freeway development for survival.
Through art, Adriana Coral explores human rights issues.
Adriana Coral Impunidad, Circle, Vicioso, 2015
But the idea for the show,” explained Magallanes, “also came from hearing about Pacific Standard Time and not hearing that anything was going on in South L.A. or Inglewood. I knew it would be important for different communities and galleries and community spaces that represent Latino art to be involved.”
L.A. native Patrick Martinez will also be one of the artists featured in the show. Through his art he’s creating discussion around cultural appropriation of Chicano style around the world.
Patrick Martinez. what you gonna do now? (haircuts look airbrushed) / Mixed media on acrylic / 72 x 72 inches / 2014
As fashion companies continue to glorify Chicano aesthetics, the show’s curator hopes it can help people understand that there are dire consequences for Chicanas and Chicanos in L.A who continue to be victims of hyper-policing.
“People gravitate towards Chicano culture and style all over the world,” he said, “While it continues to be criminalized here in L.A.,” he explained.
“What does it mean that people in Japan can celebrate the culture but we can’t even go cruising in LA? There’s an underlying racism that informs the artwork in this show.”
Barrio Logos will run from September 23rd through December 16th.
About PST: LA/LAPacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Led by the Getty, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is the latest collaborative effort from arts institutions across Southern California. Through a series of thematically linked exhibitions, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA will present a wide variety of important works of art, much of them new to Southern California audiences. While the majority of exhibitions will have an emphasis on modern and contemporary art, there also will be crucial exhibitions about the ancient world and the pre-modern era. With topics such as luxury objects in the pre-Columbian Americas, 20th-century Afro-Brazilian art, alternative spaces in Mexico City, and boundary-crossing practices of Latino artists, exhibitions will range from monographic studies of individual artists to broad surveys that cut across numerous countries.
Barrio Logos: Displacement and Vanishing Iconography
Part of the Getty’s PST LA/LA initiative
9/17/2017 — 12/16/2017
Opening reception Oct. 7th 1-6
Curated by Oscar Magallanes
The Chicano movement in Southern California, born out of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, gave rise to art, murals, west coast handstyle graffiti, tattoos, and literary works along with lowrider culture and fashion as forms of self identification and cultural pride in the midst of oppression and segregation. This unique style has spread to many countries but in Los Angeles it has faced persistent attacks whether in the form of criminalization or steep fines placed on unsanctioned murals. This has created an erasure of the cultural markers that speak most clearly in opposition to systemic racism. There is a heightened urgency to preserve and document this work in the midst of rapid gentrification. This exhibition brings together artists that not only continue to use Chicano aesthetics but also uphold the use of art as a means of challenging dominant narratives.
Descendants and dissonance: Cultural Iconography in contemporary L.A. brings together the work of three graphically inspirited artists, Oscar Magallanes, Linda Vallejo and Sonia Romero, Los Angeles based and deeply tied to Chicano culture and the tradition of challenging propagandist iconography through the use of irony and appropriation. This exhibition seeks to correlate directly with How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney’s Latin America and Latin America’s Disney and The Making of the Modern: Indigenismo, 1800-2015 at the San Diego Museum of Art in the idea of creating identity and the use of iconography as political and cultural tools.
Oscar Magallanes, creates across a spectrum of different interlocking mediums. Laser cut wood, video and stenciling create a hyper-detailed narrative that speaks directly to the history of propagandist iconography sourcing its power from the emotional experiences of the people who have most suffered from corporate imperialism. Through an alchemic combination of imagery, the work aims to be a visual documentation of suppression and creation, life and death.
Linda Vallejo created one of the most inspired bodies of work on the subject of popular culture and the effects it has on the hearts and minds of the people it seeks to influence with her series, Make ’Em All Mexican. Drawing from her experiences growing up in Europe and the United States, her overwhelming sense of feeling “other” and the complete lack of any reflection of herself in the strain of popular culture strong enough to make it around the world (Disney films, Saturday morning cartoons, Barbie, etc.)
Sonia Romero is an artist who utilizes traditional forms of printmaking with deep heart and narrative power and a strong emphasis on micro over the macro. Having studied print making at the Rhode Island School of Design, craft and history anchor the core aesthetic while it is her ability to present deep psychological and inwardly drawn images that speak to feelings community and shared trauma.
Salt Fine Art
346 North Coast Highway | laguna beach, ca | 92651
phone: 949.715.5554
Reconstitution is a group exhibition that is an update and recasting of the 1987 exhibition Constitution originally organized by the art collective Group Material. The exhibition will include work by: Kathryn Andrews, Shagha Ariannia, Gretchen Bender, Dawoud Bey, Mary Ellen Carroll, Ching Ho Cheng, Tseng Kwong Chi, Sonya Clark, Joeff Davis, Sid M. Duenas, Melvin Edwards, Ridykeulous (Nicole Eisenman & A.L. Steiner), Rafa Esparza, Lauren Davis Fisher, Arshia Haq, Rachel Harrison, Sharon Hayes, Edgar Heap of Birds, Brendan Fowler/Election Reform, Gronk, Anish Kapoor, Gelare Khoshgozaran, Kang Seung Lee, Zoe Leonard, Steve Locke, M (aka Michael Chow), Van McElwee, Harold Mendez, Mike Mills, Jenny Perlin, Jefferson Pinder, Christina Quarles, Umar Rashid, Marie “Big Mama” Roseman, Peter Saul, Augustus Sherman, Maryam Taghavi, Mark Themann, Danh Vo, Christine Wang, Timothy E. Washington, Lawrence Weiner, and the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
LAXART Text installation by Oscar Magallanes with assistance by Aaron Estrada, Alfreda Diaz and Adrian Alfaro.
Legacy of the Chicano Movement: A Discussion with Emerging Los Angeles Artist
Friday, March 3, 2017 | 7:00 – 9:00pm
Oscar will be participating in this panel discussion at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, CA.
Writer and historian Rodrigo Ribera d’Ebre leads a panel discussion that will focus on the legacy of the Chicano Movement as it relates to the work of today’s emerging Latino & Chicano artists.Topics will include muralism and social justice movements in the context of Frank Romero’s politically charged work of the 1980s and 1990s.
Photo credit: Purgatory by Miles Macgregor
