LINDA VALLEJO
Exhibitions 2010
www.lindavallejo.com
Exhibition and Permanent Collection at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MEXICAN ART
Rastros y Crónicas: Women of Juarez
The National Museum of Mexican Art has acquired “Cortesana” for its permanent collection.
Artist Statement
Mexican movies and movie posters often depict the salacious, wonton woman being seduced, or sexually used and abused by the dashing, dominant male. The man watches intently as the woman displays her body, inviting him to pleasure. But the Women of Juarez are not movie stars and they did not invite “men to pleasure.” They are young working women that were taken hostage, raped, and killed for perverse and angry pleasure.
Is it possible that media has a place in this grisly story of pain and loss? Can media – movies and movie posters – effect the way that men understand their relationship and responsibilities to women and family?
In Cortesana I have manipulated two Mexican movie posters, adding pictures of the victims, families and protestors, to draw attention to the over-sexualized imagery of Mexican media, the loss of dignity for women, the manipulative nature of seduction, and the aggression and hatred inherent in rape.
Cortesana, a mixed media collage, is placed on a manufactured white shelf indicative of the silence of international media having “shelved” this important issue. This shelf is also reminiscent of classical casket designs and the silence of the headstones on the graves of the victims.
Publication and Traveling Exhibition at the Friesen Gallery
F R I E S E N G A L L E R Y
Speak For The Trees
Sun Valley, Idaho: December 21 - February 15, 2010
Seattle, Washington: April 1 - May 31, 2010
Published by Marquand Books will be a hardcover coffee table book with 180 pages titled SPEAK FOR THE TREES. Celebrating 70 artists from around the world, each artist will be showcased on a two page spread featuring a full page/color image of their work of art, artist’s statement on one or all of the following; the specific work of art featured, their body of work on trees, or their thoughts on trees, and a piece of writing chosen by the artist on the unifying theme of trees.
The artists include both young and emerging artists, and such renowned figures as David Hockney, Yoko Ono, Mark Ryden, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Each artist contributed artwork showcased on a two-page spread together with the artist’s thinking on his or her work in relationship to trees, and with a quotation each selected from writers as diverse as Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso, Abraham Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau.
ORDER CATALOG
http://www.speakforthetreesbook.com/
40 YEAR Retrospective Exhibition at Plaza de la Raza
P L A Z A D E R A Z A
Boat House Gallery
May 15 through July 31, 2010
Plaza de al Raza, Los Angeles based cultural center celebrating it’s 40th Year Anniversary in 2010, has invited Linda Vallejo to present a Retrospective Exhibition in the Boathouse Gallery in May, June, and July 2010 in conjunction with the Latino Art Now! 2010 National Conference. In the past, the Boathouse Gallery has been the location of exhibitions by Frida Kahlo and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
The exhibition will include drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, and installations dated from 1969-2009. The exhibition will be curated by Dr. Betty Ann Brown, Latin American Art History from the University of New Mexico, and Professor, Cal State University Northridge (CSUN) Art History Department.
A full color catalog will be produced including essays by Dr. Brown, as well as:
Armando Duron - Los Angeles based collector and art aficionado
Peter Frank - Editor of THE Magazine, art critic, and curator
William Moreno - past Director of the Claremont Art Museum and the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, consultant and art dealer
Gloria Orenstein - USC Professor of Comparative Literature and Gender Studies, renowned feminist and writer
Sybil Venegas - Chairperson of the Chicana/o Studies Department at East Los Angeles College, historian and curator
“The Electrics” Solo Exhibition at Galerie Anaïs – May through June 2010
GALERIE ANAÏS
http://www.galerieanaisla.com/home.html
Exhibition Dates: May and June 2010
Directors: Anna Meliksetian and Shomais Ghassemi
Artist Statement
The Electrics are a fusion of my experiences in the golden days of Hippie-Dome and Psychedelia, the magical, hallucinatory quality of indigenous Native American and Mexican ceremonial tradition, and decades spent at the computer manipulating digital imagery. The Electrics began as “portraits” of the California Canyon and Valley Oak which surround my home in Topanga Canyon. For twelve years prior, I had been painting California landscapes in the tradition of fantastic realism. The transition came about when I tried to capture the glow of an oak bathed in the light of a full moon. The painted field became dissected by multiple organic shapes and marks painted in contrary and contrasting colors. Today, I have completed several electric oaks, landscapes, and portraits inspired by this first effort where color began to move and vibrate across the canvas.
In thinking through the artistic process I believe that The Electrics are influenced by Andy Warhol’s psychedelic pop icon, the splotchy "pixels" of Chuck Close’s portraits, the cosmic 60’s pallet and minimal line of Peter Max, and Klimt’s emphatic patterning, combined with the visual repetition and coloration of Huichol yarn painting and indigenous ceremonial bead work. In revisiting these artists and their work I am reminded of how the artistic mind “gathers” information and experiences, sometimes over a very long period of time, to reaffirm these influences in the creation of new work.
“A Prayer for the Earth” at Hardin Center for Cultural Arts - Gadsden, Alabama
HARDIN CENTER FOR CULTURAL ARTS
Gadsden, Alabama
August 15 through November 10, 2010
…more information coming soon!
LINDA VALLEJO
THE ELECTRICS ARTIST STATEMENT
ONE WOMAN EXHIBITION AT GALERIE ANAIS, MAY-JUNE 2010
The Electrics are a fusion of my experiences in the golden days of Hippie-Dome and Psychedelia, the magical, hallucinatory quality of indigenous Native American and Mexican ceremonial tradition, and decades spent at the computer manipulating digital imagery. These combined experiences are the basis for my “electrified” paintings and sculptures, where nature and people appear to glow with an almost otherworldly light.
The Electrics began as “portraits” of the California Canyon and Valley Oak which surround my home in Topanga Canyon. For twelve years prior, I had been painting California landscapes in the tradition of fantastic realism, but as I experimented with the oaks they began “morphing” from realism into abstraction. The transition came about when I tried to capture the glow of an oak bathed in the light of a full moon. The painted field became dissected by multiple organic shapes and marks painted in contrary and contrasting colors. Today, I have completed several electric oaks, landscapes, and portraits inspired by this first effort where color began to move and vibrate across the canvas.
In reading the obituaries recently I have found amazing stories of individuals who have accomplished a great deal and yet are little known. These “unknown heroes” became the basis for a new series entitled Electric Heroes. In asking friends and colleagues for their “list of heroes” I found that many people remembered Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and the Dalai Lama. These renowned figures became the first of my Electric Heroes. My goal now is to complete commissioned head and full body Electric Portraits.
In thinking through the artistic process I believe that The Electrics are influenced by Andy Warhol’s psychedelic pop icon, the splotchy "pixels" of Chuck Close’s portraits, the cosmic 60’s pallet and minimal line of Peter Max, and Klimt’s emphatic patterning, combined with the visual repetition and coloration of Huichol yarn painting and indigenous ceremonial bead work. In revisiting these artists and their work I am reminded of how the artistic mind “gathers” information and experiences, sometimes over a very long period of time, to reaffirm these influences in the creation of new work.
Betty Ann Brown, Historian and Curator states,
“Vallejo’s beloved subjects--people and nature--come together in The Electrics, the recent paintings that are expressively energized by vivid color and vibrating form. In this series, the artist has returned to the cosmic vision search initiated in her ceremonially imbued art from the 1980s. The paintings depict the altered state of the sacred that Vallejo experienced in Native American rituals.
The Electrics are unified by a brilliant, almost psychedelic palette. From lime green to hot pink, the colors Vallejo chooses recall the intensity and artificiality of early aniline dyes. The paintings are also characterized by consistent calligraphic marks. The tight curls, narrow angles, and parallel hatches all derive from one of the artist’s important early experiences.
When Vallejo’s family lived in Spain, they traveled to the Muslim palace in Granada known as the Alhambra. The young artist was so impressed by the Arabic script used as architectural decoration that she copied it into a notebook—and then repeated the forms again and again. The calligraphy emerges in her early etchings from art school, in later drawings, and now in The Electrics.
In the early years of the new millennium, Vallejo began to focus on portraits of single oak trees. I say “portraits” deliberately: these are not generic paintings of plants. Instead they are carefully detailed depictions of individual trees--the wardens and witnesses of Topanga Canyon and other celebrated sites in California, such as Joshua Tree and Boney Ridge. These are fierce and hallucinogenic portrayals of the awesome powers of nature. The growing number of Electric trees and portraits are stunningly beautiful and visionary gifts.”
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