State of the Art LA: The Week in Latino Art

Image: Alma Lopez

State of The Art is Remezcla’s weekly guide to Latin art openings in your city each week. Mingle with art admirers, collectors and casual passersby to check out these new works. And don’t forget to grab a free glass of wine…or three.

Fowler OutSpoken Conversation: Saints, Wrestlers and Women — Fowler Museum

Last week we wrote about an awesome show happening at the UCLA Fowler Museum. “Sinful Saints and Saintly Sinners at the Margins of the Americas” looks at religious imagery, with each artist putting his or her own twist on martyrs, saints, icons and more. Along with the show, the museum will host a talk called “Saints, Wrestlers and Women.” Artists Judithe Hernández and Alma López will take about women and power through the lens of their art. López creates what she calls queer santas; some scenes show the Virgin Mary holding a mermaid in an embrace. Hernández crafts portraits of women wearing what look like luchador masks with a twist – many of them are just stitches on the women’s face or are emblazoned with details like red teardrops. Head to the talk on Saturday, April 5th at 2 p.m. to find out more about their work and the show.

Javier Téllez — REDCAT

Venezuelan artist Javier Téllez explores areas that are not easy to tackle — mental illness, insanity, psychological treatment and more. In many of his works, he strives to explore the history of treatment techniques and comment on the present state of how these techniques might deal more with social patterns of thought than we think. For his first West Coast solo show, “Games are forbidden in the labyrinth,” the artist will screen his film “Durer’s Rhinoceros” and present a special installation. The show will include a large-scale chess game, a creative metaphor about the systems that deal with mental illness. It’s a unique way to place the viewer right in the middle of Téllez’s investigation. Head to REDCAT on Saturday, April 5th from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. to see the work for yourself.

Alexis Lago – Couturier Gallery

With titles like “Aquellos que escapan del sueño” and “La soledad diversa,” Alexis Lago’s watercolors feel dream-like yet familiar. Where have we seen these visions of creatures that seem to exist at the end of some world? Formerly trained as a biochemist, the artist takes an up-close approach to his fantastical world, embedding each inch of his creatures and architecture with complex detail. Lago describes his scenes as a reflection on and questioning of his own place in the world. The Cuban artist will showcase his works at his first West Coast solo show “Possible Moves” this Saturday, April 5 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Expect surreal, elusive images of worlds that seem strange but intriguing.