Join Us Saturday, September 15th from 6pm-10pm for the opening reception of “RIO XANTA”
In his second solo exhibition, Armando Lerma of the “Date Farmers” collective, invites us yet again into other worlds. His show, titled “Rio Xanta” includes glimpses of colorful scenes that encapsulate unique dimensions, drawing us into their timelessness. Inspired by hand-painted signs, commonly associated with the mundane, Lerma elevates their functionality to a place of intrigue. His appropriation of old signage mixed in with original works bends space and time, weaving the past with the present, and creating a multi-dimensional reflection of commercialized brands, painted over and drowned out by new colors and expressions.
“SO MUNDANE AND INCOMPLETE (some drawings & paintings)” May 19-June 29, 2018.
López’s work is informed by his immediate surroundings. Each drawing is a careful examination of elements found around his environment: an old decrepit home, a hill with houses, crooked telephone poles, bent palm trees, tall cypresses, a sitter caught in mid-thought, the stillness in a yet continually shifting landscape, and the fleeting appearance of an everyday object forever caught on paper. López relies on interest, observation, memories, materiality, touch, and presence, in order to reach and evoke a feeling of familiarity.
For the exhibition SO MUNDANE AND INCOMPLETE (some drawings & paintings), López gives us a series of landscape drawings developed on location, with attention to detail, a confident line, whimsical pattern, and flattening of space. Beautifully capturing views of East L.A., City Terrace, Boyle Heights, El Sereno, etc., López’s drawings breathe and expel energy and freshness. He portrays friends and loved ones in natural settings and takes figures of local Mexican-American pop culture, as images filtered thru his memory.
His still life works call forth objects from his childhood not only as simple, limited, flat, one dimensional objects but bearers of memories, beauty, design, and influence. On these sheets of paper, the viewer will experience the moments of isolation on top of a hillside spent contemplating roof tops, a friendly showdown between drawer and sitter, the quiet contemplation of a banal object, and López’s simple joy of placing a well put mark that carries a certain ‘un no se que’ on paper.
He draws from many spheres, a scope of which includes engaging, both high art and lowbrow, the sublime and mundane, American and Mexican, high craft and rasquachismo—ultimately digesting it all—what is regurgitated is something singular and uniquely his.
Manuel López (b.1983, East Los Angeles CA) attended East Los Angeles College, transferred to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where he earned his BFA in painting and drawing. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions in institutions and museums nationwide including Dark Progressivism; The Built Environment, at the Museum of Art and History, in Lancaster, CA; Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Friends Do Not Fear, at New Image Art, in West Hollywood, CA; Dia de los Muertos Exhibit at Self-Help Graphics, Boyle Heights, CA; Surface Place at Abrazo Interno Gallery at The Clemente, New York, NY; Spill at the Betty Rymer Gallery, Chicago, IL SAIC Undergrad Exhibition, at Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, IL. He lives and works in East Los Angeles.
For further information please contact the gallery at easternprojectsla@gmail.com or at 323.327.8020.
“The City” is an exhibition of low relief sculptures of iconic Downtown Los Angeles buildings by Romero.
Romero, is one of the last surviving members of iconic artist collective, Los Four known for promoting Chicano art and culture awareness in Los Angeles most significantly since the first Chicano exhibition in a mainstream museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1974.
This collection of new works exemplifies the architectural influences that continue to inspire Romero as an artist living in Los Angeles. Familiar motifs of transportation, public art, heroic women, politics and the Chicano point of view are prevalent here including police violence. Romero’s famous use of vibrant color welcomes viewers and invites them to look again.
