Heading further south, I continued my Pacific Standard Time LA/LA discussion at the Oceanside Museum of Art for their exhibition entitled UnDocumenta. Incorporating just a few artists from Latin American and the United States, this show focused on the individually personal project. Each artist only presented one to two works, however each was effectively presented as an in depth project with several elements. In this intimate setting, OMA allowed each artist to fully express their conceptually sound arguments dealing with immigration, identity, and history.

Teresita De La Terre's corner of the gallery space was dedicated to her long-term piece, 365 Days in an Immigrant's Shirt (2016). Presented through photographic documentation and an accompanying zine, De La Terre tells her year long story in which she wore a ragged shirt that she found while volunteering near the California/Mexico border.  Her curiosity of the shirt; where it came from, was it a man or a woman's, led her to appropriate a temporary identity. De La Terre wore the shirt everyday; to work at an administrative office, to church with her family, and even as a participant in a show at a women's center at school. The accompanying zine is filled with her drawings, concerns, and thoughts on the process. My own practical thoughts and questions were mirrored within the pages, making this performance piece eerily romantic. The dedication in taking on this identity temporarily changed De La Terre's life and that time spent was obviously  racked with embarrassment and uncertainty, but also comfort and a need for understanding.

Among the many stunning exhibitions consistently happening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, two exhibitions are dedicated to  Pacific Standard Time LA/LA . One of which, Painting With Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz showcases a 65 piece collection of the Mexican-American painter/activist. As a first-time viewer of his work, I was initially shocked that I had never seen it before. The exhibition covered numerous styles and phases of his artistic career, illustrating his evolution as an artist. However, multiple factors remained the same throughout the various scenes, namely his vibrant use of texture and color. The movement created by his heavy use of oil paint, layered and caked on, is only extenuated by his unrelenting use of impossibly bright color.

Perhaps most well known for being a member of Los Four, an artist collective that produced and distributed public art in the 1970's and '80s, Almaraz and the group were also heavily involved in Chicano activism. Almaraz is known to have been an early advocate for the United Farm Workers and Cesar Chavez, as well for his poetry and philosophy on the subject matter. Recognized as a major catalyst for bringing Chicano art to American art institutions, the Los Four produced murals that established the art form as an important American art movement. Ironically, their first exhibition as a group was also presented by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which would set the stage for their continued success over the following decade.

Although the collection I was looking at referred to Almaraz's success with the artist collective, his style was obviously singular. This selection of work was created in the last 11 years of his life and truly typified the Los Angeles cityscape. From peaceful landscapes of Echo Park to gangster shootouts, Almaraz captured a variety of scenes with his expressive and vibrant palette. My favorites however, were his depictions of a darker subject matter, namely car crashes and burning houses. The sweeps of motion and violent reality are beautifully juxtaposed with his gorgeous skylines. While each bursts with flames and smoke, it is impossible not to look at the negative space; the warm oranges and yellows or sometimes the cool blue and purple of a mid-evening.

Perhaps his most famous series in the collection were his many depictions of Echo Park at all times of the day. Filled with deep purples and blues, the multi-paneled pieces showcase the beautiful bridge and water, along with figures enjoying the luxury of the green landscape; a completely different trajectory than his previously mentioned "nightmares". With such a variety of subject matter and styles throughout his career, this more specified selection of work showcased Almaraz's unbridled, natural talent.

Pacific Standard Time LA/LA will be going on at 70+ art institutions around Southern California, many of which have just opened and will be up until January 2018. For more information and the full list of exhibits, check out Pacific Standard Time LA/LA

After months of waiting with anticipation for The Getty Foundation's exciting project Pacific Standard Time LA/LA to arrive to over 70 art institutions across Southern California, I finally embarked on my treasure hunt throughout the region. The entire project offers an opportunity for the museums and university galleries involved to create an exhibition that features a faction of Chicano and Latino art. Upon checking out the corresponding catalog that lists all of the exhibitions, it became apparent that the institutions involved had produced shows that were thoughtful, diverse, and were vast in their themes and approaches. As the catalog for my guide, I plan to explore and report on as many as I can attend, which is seemingly just a fraction, of the amazing shows taking place across a very vast region.

As my inaugural stop, the Craft & Folk Art Museum presented The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility, an exhibition centered around contemporary artists discussing specifically the physical border and its imagined purpose. While utilizing various aspects of US and Mexican culture, and specifically the transference between the two, each artist created works that were both vibrant aesthetically and conceptually. For instance, Marcos Ramírez ERRE created Toy-An Horse (2016), a wooden two-headed horse sculpture inspired by the Greek myth of the Trojan Horse. Different from standard representations of the horse however, this sculpture has open lattice work throughout his body, showing the open cavity in a cage-like way, and in doing so, questioning the mutual relationship between the two countries and the ultimate transparency of our exchanges.

One of my favorite installation pieces, Estalagmitas Y Estalagtitas Urbanas (2014) by Betsabeé Romero was made of small rubber tires piled/suspended from the ceiling that were carved and guilded with patterned designs. Romero's focus on the tire as a medium resides in its various uses by manufacturing companies and transportation, but also as scrap that is then used as building material for homes along the hills of Tijuana. Romero's findings of these materials, and her subsequent use artistically, gives the tires a sense of being archived and provides a sort of monument to their existence.  Another installation by Adrian Esparza entitled Vuela Vuela (2017) was also inspired by a readily seen item, the Mexican serape. Motivated by the graphic designs and colors of the traditional shawl, Esparza creates a site-specific wall hanging that deconstructs those colors and lines to then produce geometric abstractions of the original piece. Utilizing nails and thread, the large-scale work bursts with color and although it is not perfectly representational of the original material, the influence is apparent.

Just a taste of the many notable examples, the entire exhibition's focus on craftsmanship and material connected the artistic intention so effectively. The beautiful vibrancy of the pieces further aided in continuing the relevant and necessary dialogue these artists are conveying about the border, immigration, and a different perspective on the exchange of culture.

Pacific Standard Time LA/LA will be going on at 70+ art institutions around Southern California, many of which have just opened and will be up until January 2018. For more information and the full list of exhibits, check out Pacific Standard Time LA/LA