ART CITIES: Los Angeles-John Valadez
As a trailblazer of the early Chicano Arts Movement in the 70s and 80s, following the Chicano Civil Rights Movement of the 60s and 70s, John Valadez’s work has come to define an iconography of Chicano experience in the city by catalyzing its changing dynamics and reconstructing a mythical allegory that speaks to an alternative vision.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Archive
John Valadez’s work has come to define an iconography of Chicano experience in the city by catalyzing its changing dynamics and reconstructing a mythical allegory that speaks to an alternate vision. Through a multidisciplinary practice spanning 45 years, encompassing documentary photography and portraiture, public murals, paintings, and pastel works, Valadez has cultivated a style that transcends genre designations. His work evokes a fluidity between multiple cultures and visual lexicons, effectively mirroring the unsettled experience of the Chicano identity. Valadez continues to pursue politically engaged work, a persistent voice championing generations of Chicano and Latinx communities. John Valadez in his solo exhibition “Chaos Anime” presents new paintings that address the shifting global dynamics and social climates facing new generations of Chicanos today, alongside recent works that revisit earlier themes. Together, the works exhibit the breadth of the artist’s social commentaries and further contextualize his lauded approach to painting. Drawing from current events, cultural histories, city life, and such experiences filtered through lucid dreaming, Valadez implements realism, mannerism, abstraction, and montage as a vehicle for allegory and satire to ignite a myriad of socio-political conversations. Themes of invisible borders, sublime skies, and tempestuous seas, and juxtapositions between reality and dreams and the natural world versus the consequences of human interferences, are but some of the constants throughout the trove of Valadez’s urban proverbs. A pivotal moment in Valadez’s new body of work is his extension of Chicano Movement principles, speaking to global matters of displacement, gentrification, economic disparities, famine, the environment, and geopolitics. The exhibition’s title work, “Chaos” (2024) is a new mural-scaled painting that dismantles the binaries and clichés of “haves and have-nots” narratives. Compositionally split in two, the work is Valadez’s read on today’s state of the union, a horror vacui of crises weighing social violence, environmental, and economic issues. The allegory presents new perspectives on borders and speaks to new generations of Chicanos making reverse migrations from the US to Mexico in hopes of improved cultural connections and quality of life. “Shipwreck Cruise” (2024) presents a critique of tourism’s effect on locals and their environments. Against a tranquil open sea, suspended in the aftermath of an event we are left to imagine, an acidic skyline of yellows disrupts the sea and sky in a haze indistinguishable from sunrise, sunset, or pollution. The mysterious scene presents a conceptual background for us to locate our complicities, empathies, and apathies, and follow the lead of the basket-donning woman at the helm of the ship, looking to the horizon for new solutions. Other recent works, “Bambi Negra” (2018) and “Piernas Anime” (2017), exemplify different approaches to Valadez’s wry satire, where it is not always extended outward but also takes criticality inward, including self- reflection in the case of “Bambi Negra”, depicting one of his dreams, and the cultural ruminations of “Piernas Anime”, influenced by the many layers of gender dynamics of Southern California car show culture. “Piernas Anime”, translated as “anime legs,” exemplifies an alloy of Valadez’s influences from the futurism aesthetics present in Japanese Anime, to mannerism and surrealism. The painting presents a tableau that subverts the male gaze and machismo hierarchies of classic car shows. With symbols, figures, and activities occurring in the foreground and background, the paintings resist hierarchies and contain multiple entry points. The works in the exhibitioj mark an exciting moment in Valadez’s career. Radical and indefatigable, Valadez’s allegories, cutting satire, masterful color, and playful yet dead-panned pastiche bring a refreshed sensibility of endurance despite the capriciousness of time.
Photo: John Valadez, Chaos, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 84 x 144 in, © John Valadez, Courtesy the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Gallery
Info: Luis De Jesus Los Angeles Gallery, 1110 Mateo St.Los Angeles, CA, USA, Duration: 27/4-8/6/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://www.luisdejesus.com/
