Oscar Magallanes
MFA, University of California, San Diego, 2021
BA, University of California, Los Angeles, 2017
Magallanes is a Los Angeles-based artist working with painting, sculpture, and mixed media. His artwork is informed by the cultural and social elements of his upbringing in a Mexican-American barrio east of downtown Los Angeles. At the age of fifteen, he was expelled from high school but was accepted into the Ryman Arts program at the Otis College campus, which encouraged him to become a professional artist. His work often touches down at the intersections of cultural iconography, the folkloric, and the aesthetics of propaganda.
In 2016, Magallanes founded 3B Collective along with five other fellow UCLA Art students. They have focused on large-scale, site-specific public works. Since then, the 3B Collective has created permanent site-specific and public art projects for the Museo Infantil Oaxaca, UCLA, UCSD, California State University Stanislaus, and is currently working on public works for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, University of California San Diego, and City College San Diego.
Magallanes’ work has been exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Museo CEART de Baja California Mexicali, Mexico, the National Museum of Mexican American Art in Chicago, Illinois, the McNay Museum in San Antonio, Texas, Las Cruces Museum of Art in Las Cruces, New Mexico and is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, Illinois, La Salle University: Art Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the McNay Museum, San Antonio, Texas, Special Collections, and the University Archives at Bucknell University.
Other professional activities include teaching as an Associate Instructor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego, a steering committee member for the Creative Jobs Collective Impact Initiative (CJCII), a board member for the arts education organizations Ryman Arts and Self Help Graphics and Art, as well as a Young Professional Board member for Inner-City Arts. In 2014, he participated in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship Academy and has curated several exhibitions, including Barrio Logos for LA/LA, the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative.