Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Paiting series






Painting Series:
In this series of paintings I collapse two highly legible forms of cultural representation to compose the paintings. Each picture has specific characters rendered in acrylic on watercolor paper that reference Social Realism. The environment that figures exist in look like the background sets of American cartoons from the 1950's such as Roadrunner and Speedy Gonzalez.
In the paintings I conflate notions of representation and cultural identity and investigate their relationship to one another. More often than not, I find that our perception of reality is heavily influenced by pre-idealized conceptions. Through these paintings I intend to start a dialog about the ability humans have to construct realities that can become so powerful that they surpass natural law. 





Thursday, May 30, 2013

Silk-screen series






 
Silk-Screen print Series:
The posters are constructed of two forms of visual communication that are super-imposed to create a discourse. The foundational layer consists of a vintage family photographs that is then covered by text that references "Cholo" or gang style graffiti tagging.
With the posters, I explore my personal relationship to Mexican immigration, Chicanismo, and gang culture in Los Angeles. By publicly activating this reconstructed images I am attempting to communicate with local taggers, gang members, artists, or anyone interested. I am to open a street-level conversation about our current socio-economic status, our romantic views of past histories, and how these concepts inform who we are today.