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New Drawings
Lui Velazquez
Calle José Maria Larroque #273, 2do Piso, Int. 6, Colonia Federal., Tijuana, Baja California
www.luivelazquez.com/
Lui Velazquez
Calle José Maria Larroque #273, 2do Piso, Int. 6, Colonia Federal., Tijuana, Baja California
www.luivelazquez.com/
New Drawings
Richard Bott, Lost Dog, 2009, charcoal and ink jet, 36" x 40"
Featuring the recent work of three emerging artists, New Drawings used
this most traditional of media to expose nuances in the familiar and taken-for-granted in the practice of everyday American life. Despite the sumptuous materiality and recognizable content of the drawings presented, they are markedly vacant, propelling the viewer into an uncanny space that is known, but also unknown, via its deconstruction.
Referencing elements of photography and film, Richard Bott takes the medium and message of film noir and subverts it through ominous chiaroscuro. Strip malls, parking garages, a Chili's restaurant: these are things we see, without seeing them, every day. Bott's work reinvigorates and questions a landscape that has become rote throughout suburban Southern California yet also dwells within the interstices of our optical unconscious, resulting in what Bott terms "sublime banality."
Using bridges and ladders as metaphors, Louis Schmidt's work exposes contradictions within the hallowed, incestuous, capitalistic constructs of (upward) social mobility and spiritual transcendence. By utilizing spray paint, oft an agent of subversion, Schmidt both reinforces and literalizes the meaning of his images.
In Zac Monday's drawing, the figure is absent even when present, alluding to the complexity of identity. Through the enigmatic anonymity of figures that are masked or face away from the viewer, Monday's work speaks to intolerance and internal struggle that takes place amidst, and perhaps results from, the pressure to conform to rigid constructs.
The work in New Drawings scatters vestigial remnants of Manifest Destiny onto the page. This reverberated in terms of its location in Tijuana, a town renowned for its high crime rates and landscape of poverty, all existing in the shadow of American suburban comfort and complacency. Through an ironic palette of black and white, the artists expose complexities underlying unrealistic notions such as progress.
this most traditional of media to expose nuances in the familiar and taken-for-granted in the practice of everyday American life. Despite the sumptuous materiality and recognizable content of the drawings presented, they are markedly vacant, propelling the viewer into an uncanny space that is known, but also unknown, via its deconstruction.
Referencing elements of photography and film, Richard Bott takes the medium and message of film noir and subverts it through ominous chiaroscuro. Strip malls, parking garages, a Chili's restaurant: these are things we see, without seeing them, every day. Bott's work reinvigorates and questions a landscape that has become rote throughout suburban Southern California yet also dwells within the interstices of our optical unconscious, resulting in what Bott terms "sublime banality."
Using bridges and ladders as metaphors, Louis Schmidt's work exposes contradictions within the hallowed, incestuous, capitalistic constructs of (upward) social mobility and spiritual transcendence. By utilizing spray paint, oft an agent of subversion, Schmidt both reinforces and literalizes the meaning of his images.
In Zac Monday's drawing, the figure is absent even when present, alluding to the complexity of identity. Through the enigmatic anonymity of figures that are masked or face away from the viewer, Monday's work speaks to intolerance and internal struggle that takes place amidst, and perhaps results from, the pressure to conform to rigid constructs.
The work in New Drawings scatters vestigial remnants of Manifest Destiny onto the page. This reverberated in terms of its location in Tijuana, a town renowned for its high crime rates and landscape of poverty, all existing in the shadow of American suburban comfort and complacency. Through an ironic palette of black and white, the artists expose complexities underlying unrealistic notions such as progress.