Christo Oropeza
Estamos aquí, y trabajando

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 24th, 12 - 6pm

Exhibition Dates: July 24th - July 31st 2021

In San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, through one of the beautifully muralled alleys that run between 24th and 25th streets, an old raised roll-up door reveals a series of new paintings by Christo Oropeza. Born and raised just a few miles from the gallery, Oropeza’s paintings lovingly depict scenes of labor, still-lives that expertly capture the calm and quietudes between hard work and respite. While previous bodies of paintings acted as meditations on the tools of work taken from the artist’s profession as an art-handler, carefully observing and imbuing such humble objects as a pallet jack or a mop with the utmost reverence and care thereby transforming these things into lifelike figures, Oropeza’s latest paintings have turned their focus back to the human figure. The central painting of Estamos aquí, y trabajando is a tender portrait of the artist’s father Cenobio Oropeza smiling back at the viewer as he holds onto a Sunset Scavenger truck, a radiant tribute to a man who at the time was 22 and recently immigrated to the US from Mexico, and who today at the age of 74 still works for the same company (now Recology) completing his daily 1am route around the UCSF Parnassus campus. 

Estamos aquí, y trabajando (We’re here, and working) much like the glowing portrait of the artist’s father pays respects to all the workers who keep a city running and a society functioning, so much of this labor going unseen or unappreciated, largely taken up by people of color who’ve sacrificed on the frontlines during this pandemic and will continue to far beyond the reach of this tumultuous past year and a half. These are union workers, portrayed in flattened space and stripped down colors, intimate portraits of a moment shared on a union break, their stances captured in an almost renaissance-like contrapposto. These paintings within Estamos aquí, y trabajando and the surroundings in which we find them, the alley leading to the exhibition space at 66 Balmy exist in quiet yet intimate conversation–the alley used largely by neighbors, those viewing the storied murals, and by Recology workers who plod through the alley on their daily routes ensuring that our city can continue to operate smoothly.