ART CITIES:Los Angeles-Raul Guerrero

For over four decades, Raul Guerrero has made work informed by his experiences navigating cultures as an American of Mexican ancestry in Southern California. In his paintings, photographs, video, and performance works, Guerrero utilizes language and cultural signifiers to examine notions of place as a way to understand personal concepts of self.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Kordansky Gallery Archive

Raul Guerrero in his solo exhibition “Fata Morgana” presents new and recent paintings.  Spending significant amounts of time in locations of specific interest, Guerrero approaches his subjects by sourcing and remixing elements that allow him to further excavate histories of place. This investigative approach is presented in the exhibition, where three bodies of work, grouped thematically by location: the “Great Plains and the Black Hills of South Dakota”, “Latin America”, and “present-day Los Angeles” address the myths and realities of the settlement of Southern California, specifically as a region where Native, Latin, and European American identities converge. Taken together, the paintings depict historical contexts that address current themes of displacement, exile, and refuge. For Guerrero, this collection of locations function as a series of metaphors for examining his own Mestizo ancestry (of Spanish and Indigenous descent) and the various cultural environments in which he’s embedded.

Raul Guerrero was born in Brawley, California in 1945 and grew up in National City, located twelve miles north of Tijuana, Mexico. He currently resides in San Diego, California. In the 50’s and 60’s, weekly family visits to Tijuana introduced him to a variety of Mexican folk arts and crafts imported from the interior of Mexico and all types of kitsch geared towards the tourist market like Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” rendered in plaster, or Cervantes Don Quixote and Sancho Panza carved out of pine boards. At the same time an incredible array of pop and sub-cultures were evolving in Southern California, including low riders, pachucos, surfers, beats, folk singers, motorcycle gangs, Hollywood culture and the newly emerging music scene inspired by British bands. This co-mingling of cultures and images was absorbed by Guerrero and would influence his artistic approach and content from this point on. Guerrero attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, receiving his BFA in 1970. His first solo exhibition, in 1974, was at the Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles. The exhibition featured, “Rotating Yaqui Mask”, an Indigenous artifact attached to a wall mounted motor rotating at 15 RPM; “UFOLA”, a photo composite of a UFO over the city of Los Angeles; “Bird Bone Whistles”, bird bones crafted into whistles and attached to an compressor to create sounds and photograms depicting obscene hand gestures with their Spanish translations. Similar works and exhibitions followed this initial show. In the 1980’s, Guerrero shifted his focus from the conceptual experimentation of the previous decade to a more emotional, allegorical style using oil painting as the medium of expression. Oil painting allowed for the opportunity to create representations of thoughts and encountered situations using emotion and imagination more directly. In 1984, during a six-month artistic retreat in Mexico, he created the “Oaxaca” collection, the first body of work using this new approach to his art making. Over the last decade, the question of the reality and myth of the American continent has been the primary interest in his artistic content. The ongoing series, “Problemas y Secretos Maravillosos de La Indias/ Problems and Marvellous Secrets of the Indies”, examines American lands and their historical mythology. The project now includes three distinct areas of investigation: “The Black Hills of Dakota”, “Latin America”, and “Southern California”.

Photo: Raul Guerrero, Chez Jay: Santa Monica, 2006, oil on linen, 80 x 108 x 1 1/4 inches, (203.2 x 274.3 x 3.2 cm), © Raul Guerrero, Courtesy the artist and David Kordansky Gallery

Info: David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 17/7-28/8/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidkordanskygallery.com