2110 Gallery: Art de la Raza

The 2110 Gallery Second Saturday Art Walk, 5/10/14

          For the Second Saturday Art Walk, the 2110 Gallery held a multi-artist exhibition for Latino(a) artists.  The show features artworks that touch on tradition and culture, combined with contemporary elements and the expressions of each individual artist.  The exhibition, titled Art de la Raza, showcased mostly paintings done in many different styles but there were some sculptures in the show.  When I walked in, there were brownies and other pastries and some champagne being served for the opening of the exhibition.  After spending time, looking at the works in the gallery, I went back and noticed that the building extends in the back to studio spaces for other artists.

Raphael Delgado talks about his art

Raphael Delgado, Voyage, 2013

          Raphael Delgado's art is diverse; he explores painting and collage.  In his piece titled Head Study, he explores shapes within a human portrait.  It reminds me of cubism, but Delgado does not abstract the form of the man into shapes but simply fits the shapes onto the man, almost as if he is made of it.  Delgado's collage works are more intriguing to me not only because of the composition and arrangement of the pieces, but because of his process in creating them.  I got a chance to talk to the artist himself and he told me his collage works are made up of pieces of old artwork.  He takes from work he doesn't use and cuts them up and creates an entirely new piece made up of remnants of old work.  The idea of using old work to create a new art piece was an interesting concept to me.  He re-contextualizes them into something new so not only is it visually different from the old work, it now takes on new form and meaning.  He told the audience he wanted to get them thinking about the lines and intersecting shapes and to see what they can find within the artwork.  When I look into Delgado's Head Study, I see his interest in line and shape within a form.  I feel like it is almost a geometric piece because of all the different shapes he creates through the use of line.  In Voyage I see line and shape.  The little designs he creates from lines are thought provoking.  Delgado explores the lines and creates different forms and designs.  The limited color palette and the placement of colors suggests the artist wants his viewers to focus on these lines.

Raphael Delgado, Head Study, 2014

Maceo Montoya, La inmensidad I, 2009

Maceo Montoya, Viejita in Target, 2009

          Maceo Montoya's works are mostly large and his focus seems to be on the landscape and atmosphere.  His works are pretty realistic and gives his pieces a clear color scheme.  In La inmensidad I, features a neighborhood.  A lone child rides his tricycle and a boy kicks a soccer ball.  There is a silhouette of a man standing in the background.  The name implies a Latino context, so I thought perhaps this is a neighborhood inhabited mostly by Latin Americans?  Although there is a lot going on in the foreground, there is equal attention being spent up in the sky.  The work translated means "the immensity"; is it addressing the immense space of the sky above?  Or does it speak of the immense poverty of Latinos living in the United States or Latin America?  For La inmensidad I, a cool color scheme is used and the people all appear to be lonely and although the kids are playing, they are playing alone.  In Viejita in Target, a warm tone is applied.  I still pick up a sense of loneliness: the little old lady is alone and the space around her is vast and even the shelves are far from her.  I get the feeling that Montoya is trying to depict loneliness in social settings.

Aida Lizalde, Meat, 2013

Aida Lizalde, Newborn, 2012

          Aida Lizalde explores her meaning in both acrylic paintings and ceramic sculptures.  Her paintings focus in on the main subject unlike Maceo Montoya's work above.  She tells the audience that her paintings are focused on birth, childhood and womanhood.  In her painting Newborn, it is clear that the painting is about birth.  It features a baby, with an umbilical cord still attached.  Her body is vertical, and her face scrunched up in discontent.  Lizalde made the decision to have the female genitals exposed and have it be the body parts closest to the viewer.  I wonder if the artist is wanting to display birth, childhood and womanhood all in one painting.  Giving birth is an experience unique to women, so Newborn expresses both womanhood and birth.  Soon, the baby will become a child, and then eventually grow into a woman, completing the cycle of birth to childhood and to womanhood.  Lizalde's Meat is a more ambiguous.  There is no clear meaning, only what the audience can glean from it.  I thought it alluded to the female because the meat is pink, a color associated with femininity.  Meat can be referring to the objectification of the female body, reducing her to a piece of meat.