Many works in the show feature photographs transposed onto the skin of the figures. “So it took me to get out of my neighborhood to realize that there was any difference, really.” was different or Beverly Hills was different than where I was from,” said Guevara. “I didn’t know anything outside of South Central for quite some time until I was older, to realize that the Westside of L.A. “House Money” also captures a distinct tension between the “violence in the ’90s and early 2000s era” and the “very joyful times” he experienced in his apartment complex, where cousins often lived, and the surrounding area. (Yubo Dong / From Elmer Guevara and Charlie James Gallery) “House Money” centers largely around himself, his dad and his brother Guevara uses motifs such as a subtle line in “Young Grasshopper” that includes the year 1995, a nod to growth charts in homes tracking children’s heights over the years. His 2021 solo show at Residency gallery, “Mi Orgullo,” features works he made while away from home for the first time, many of them featuring his mom. His color palette also seemed “very saturated” in contrast to the East Coast’s colors, a nod to his studies of work by artists in the Bay Area Figurative Movement. He often referenced the helicopters that consistently fly over South L.A., a sight that New Yorkers aren’t as familiar with some of his portraits included bus stop signs for local lines that Angelenos might recognize but others might gloss over. The move from Los Angeles to New York was “a huge culture shock,” especially since he arrived during the winter.Īt the time, Guevara was creating pieces that felt familiar to Angelenos but less so to the students in his cohort, who came from all over the world. He later moved to New York to pursue his MFA from Hunter College in 2019. “And it requires a lot of hard work, but I was just like, ‘I’m willing to work it and just see how far it goes.’”Īfter getting his BFA from Cal State Long Beach Guevara took a year and a half off. “By then I was like, “OK, cool, this is what I like to do,’” said Guevara. He often went on bike rides with friends, as they scouted spots for graffiti.Īt East Los Angeles College, Guevara took a range of classes for two years before a counselor pointed out that he had enough credits to major in art. by skateboard and bus he remembers going to the beach the first time on the 33, getting off at Venice Beach. Growing up, Guevara remembers having neighbors who would often draw characters like “Dragon Ball Z” and “Beavis and Butt-Head.” As a teen attending Manual Arts High School, he explored L.A. One hand carries a basketball, while the other cradles a box with prized possessions: money, a Game Boy and Spider-Man playing cards. One piece, titled “Young Grasshopper,” features a young Guevara listening to a Walkman as a blimp floats above him in the distance. You can find many literal containers in the compositions, often used to store valuables. “House Money” tracks his journey as a kid growing up in South LA in the ’90s, and as an adult confronting generational trauma and complicated family dynamics. Guevara’s parents left El Salvador in the 1980s, starting a new life in Los Angeles. Guevara captures ordinary moments in his life that are loaded with meaning, referencing his upbringing and his family’s personal history. The exhibition features paintings, mixed-media works and drawings that depict Guevara and his family against backdrops of his home’s interior and exterior scenery. Containers, both literal and not, stand in for family history and relationships in Guevara’s exhibition “House Money,” currently on view at the Charlie James Gallery. But decades later, the South Los Angeles-born and -raised artist would come across her writing, weaving it into his multilayered paintings of childhood, family and the city. When the science fiction author published her missive on containers, artist Elmer Guevara hadn’t been born yet. “That is why I like novels: instead of heroes they have people in them,” she writes. She goes on to discuss the novel as a container, tying in her approach to sci-fi writing. Le Guin writes about the importance of the “container” as one of “the earliest cultural inventions” in the early history of humankind. In her text “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” from the late 1980s, Ursula K.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |