CONTIGO

Co-Curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 10th, 2024, 6 - 9 pm

Showing: February 10th - March 23rd, 2024

Artists : Aaron Estrada, Anabel Juárez, DL Alvarez, Georgina Treviño, Gregory Bojorquez, Higinio Martinez, Lizette Hernández, Mitsy Avila Ovalles, Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Xandra Ibarra, Raul De Lara, and Justin Favela

Gregory Bojorquez, Boyle Heights Sunrise, 2013, 20 x 24 in. Archival Pigment Print, Ed. 2/5

Gregory Bojorquez, Sanford’s Junk Store Film Fest, 1999, 20 x 24 in, Archival Pigment Print, Ed. 2/5

Gregory Bojorquez, Little East Side Beauty Salon, 2014, 20x24, Archival pigment print, Ed. 2/5

Aaron Estrada, Desmadre, 2024, 18 x 11 x 18 in. Plastic, Razor Wire, Used White Pro Club T-Shirt, Wood, Veladoras, Blood, Smoke and Lug Nut

Aaron Estrada, Grandma Still Praying For Me, 2023, 30 x 30 in. Plastic, Acrylic, Mercado Bag, Vinyl, Stickers, Hard Enamel Pin, Lighter, Dice, Wire, Spit and Smoke

Aaron Estrada, Dreamcatcher, Atrapasueños, 2023, 37 x 39 x 90 in. Chains, Barbed Wire, Rust, Vinegar, Spit, Clay, Heart Keychain, El Salvador Keychain

Anabel Juarez, Papalomeh (Nahuatl for Butterflies), 2021, 27.5 x 25 x 20 in. Glazed Ceramic

DL Alvarez, Paths To and From This Place Are Also Here, 2024, 22.5 x 30 in. Graphite, Colored Pencil and Collage on Paper

Georgina Treviño, Bélica y Bellaka, 2024, 19 x 12 in. Stainless Steel

Higinio Martinez, Liberty, 2024, 11 x 15 x 15 in. Oil, Acrylic, Plaster, Foam, Quarter, Wire and Found Wood

Lizette Hernandez, Ascendiendo, 2023, 13 x 1 x 16 in. Raku-Fired Ceramic

Lizette Hernandez, Testigo, 2023, 12 x 4 x 7 in, Raku Fired Ceramic

Lizette Hernandez, Ejemplo, 2023, 7 x 4.5 x 5.5 in, Raku Fired Ceramic

Mitsy Avila Ovalles, Dulce Compania, 2023, 30 x 18 x 6 in. Mixed Media on Pillowcase

Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, Suite Pour L’invisible by Ana Roxanne, 2023, 10 x 18 x 5 in. Lil Mariachi Sombrero from Coyoacán, Dragon Skin Silicone, Car Parts Found Passing a Dry Arroyo, Rabbit Pelt, a Black T-Shirt Stained with Avocado Oil, Sequins and Shards of Found Plexiglass

Salvador Jimenez Flores, A La Chingada Con Montsanto, 2023, 5.5 x 6 x 8.5 in. Kiln-Casted Glass

Raul De Lara, Tired America / America Cansada, 2022, 43 X 12 X 5 in, Ash, Steel, Lacquer, Wall Hook

Justin Favela, Mar Atlántico, after José María Velasco, 2018, 17.72 x 24.02 in. Paper and Glue on Board

GGLA is proud to present Contigo, a group exhibition co-curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, featuring works by DL Alvarez, Gregory Bojorquez, Aaron Estrada, Justin Favela, Lizette Hernández, Xandra Ibarra, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, Anabel Juárez, Raul De Lara, Higinio Martinez, Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya, Mitsy Avila Ovalles, Georgina Treviño. Translating simply to “with you,” Contigo draws together a group of thirteen artists hailing from across the US and south of the border, through this process revealing the great diversity of practices and techniques employed by these artists, while also hinting at a sense of shared narrative and experience.

Perfectly setting the scene within Contigo are the photographs of Gregory Bojorquez, a native Angeleño who has been documenting the world around him for the past three decades. From the bright pink hand painted facade of a beauty salon with a paletero’s lonely cart sitting idly by in “Little East Side Beauty Salon”, to a rusted out car sitting in “Boyle Heights Sunrise” amongst patchy parched grasses and wily cacti in a side yard, Bojorquez depicts the East Side of Los Angeles as a living and breathing entity. From loose handpainted signage, to decrepit fencing and unruly overgrowth, vibrant colors cast a few shades duller through exposure to an unrelenting sun – the aesthetic language of the built environment within Los Angeles’ spanish-speaking communities are deeply embedded in the works of those artists hailing from Los Angeles and beyond. Aaron Estrada, another native Angeleno, reflects and refracts the forms and detritus found around LA through his disorderly sculptural works. Within “Desmadre” Estrada uses a nearly foot thick roll of razor wire as a weighty frame for a deeply layered collage that combines everything from a used Pro Club t-shirt, religious candles or veladoras, blood, smoke and plastic, all anchored together with a polished lugnut.

Materiality and the deep intentionality and significance of chosen materials is another line that threads through so many of the works in Contigo. The material descriptions for Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya’s ghostly figurative sculptures often read as descriptive poetry, as the artist conjures forth Nahuales – magical beings imbued with the powers of shape-shifting. Montoya’s “Suite Pour L’invisible by Ana Roxanne”, combines such disparate and loaded materials as a mariachi sombrero from Coyoacán with dragon skin silicone; car parts found passing a dry arroyo with a rabbit pelt, and horn tips with sequins, amongst others. Within “Liberty” Los Angeles-based Higinio Martinez creates a dark pillow sized mass from oil and acrylic paint and various other materials, interjected with a weathered cross-shaped piece of found wood that leads the piece to feel like both a burnt-out landscape and a makeshift grave. Through Oakland-based artist Xandra Ibarra’s “Free To Those Who Deserve It (green double double)”, the artist pays homage while exploring the legacies of artists Bob Flangan and Sheree Rose whose practices fused performance and BDSM in new ways. The artist bends and clamps a silicone dildo with an industrial vice, piercing and clasping the phallus with a mixture of industrial and body modification hardware. Contrasting this is a work by Mitsy Avila Ovalles, using a weathered deep grey pillowcase as a substrate. Ovalles builds layered narratives as nostalgic handdrawn renderings of characters from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back are overlaid with the words “Sleep Walk” in old english. A pair of haunting eyes watches over as floral embroideries are embedded in the outlines of a pair of lungs, and a portrait of Dodgers player Adrian Gonzalez bowing his helmet lies just beneath an excerpt from a guardian angel prayer in spanish, emblazoned in bold iron on letters. Portland-based artist DL Alvarez utilizes many of the same signifiers as artists such as Aaron Estrada, yet employs these through drawings and collage on paper. Alvarez’ “paths to and from this place are also here”, sees radiating diagonals of chains and a cuffed pair of disembodied hands and arms, stretching over an ominous evening landscape, as a series of ghoulish faces overlook this strange scene.

For other artists within Contigo, we see traditional artistic and craft techniques employed and amplified through scale, complexity and layered meanings. Los Angeles-based Anabel Juárez depicts the beautiful monarch butterfly within a large-scale ceramic piece that fuses multiple butterflies into a kind of static embrace, paying homage to these brilliant transformational creatures who each year return to Michoacán, where the artist was born. Lizette Hernández uses clay as a means of exploring sacred objects, within “Ascendiendo” conjuring an architectural archway form that is in a rich color shifting metallic blue, from the Raku firing. Chicago-based Salvador Jiménez-Flores creates a deeply textured skull form through colorful kiln formed glass realized in the colors of Mexico’s flag, the morbid form and title “A la chingada con Monsanto”, ruminating on the litany of ecological, environmental and human catastrophes wrought by this agricultural giant. Moving to much softer materials, Las Vegas’ Justin Favela takes the cut-paper technique seen most-often in piñatas and applies it to immersive sculptural installations and wall-based works. Favela’s “Mar Atlántico, after José María Velasco” uses this iconic technique to depict an impressionistic ocean landscape realized in rich varied hues of purple, blue, yellow and pink; paying homage to the landscape paintings of the 19th-20th century Mexican painter José María Velasco. 

Working sculpturally yet in a much different way, artists Raul De Lara and Georgina Treviño both identify and augment objects, thereby heightening their gravitas and significance. Treviño’s “Bélica y Bellaka”, sees the artist transforming the iconic nameplate necklace, both enlarging their generally diminutive scale into an almost industrial object fashioned from polished stainless steel, as dolphins frame a cursive text that reads “Bélica y Bellaka”. Within Raul de Lara’s “Tired America / America Cansada”, the classic farming tool of the pitchfork is both anthropomorphized as the tools wooden handle lazily curls around itself and the hook that suspends it, while also hinting at a much more sinister realization as the tool’s handle loops around to form an inverted noose. 

Installation View, Contigo