Sublunary
Various Small Fires is elated to announce the opening of Sublunary, a group presentation in the main gallery of our Los Angeles location examining Southern California鈥檚 transcendent natural terrain and dynamic social ecology. The exhibition unites the works of five artists: Jackie Castillo, Mercedes Dorame, Lizette Hern谩ndez, Esteban Ram贸n P茅rez, and Lily Ram铆rez. Ranging from photography, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, their cross-disciplinary works express a kinship with regional topographies 鈥� subverting these spaces through color, medium, organic materials, and abstracted form. Sublunary explores the landscape as a liminal space between nature and culture 鈥� one altered by human and non-human migration, urban expansion, colonial histories, and our intrinsic sensitivity to the elemental aesthetics of the region.
Jackie Castillo鈥檚 photographic works investigate the architectural landscape and distinct cultural zeitgeist of working-class ascension in her hometown, Anaheim, California. Through a double exposure made on 120mm color-positive film, Castillo鈥檚 floor-bound cerulean work, Between no space of mine and no space of yours, presents two views from the sidewalk. 鈥淭he image is merged onto foundation construction material and suggests two stairways moving past each other and the topographic rise of a new architecture through suburban vernacular鈥攁 broken down fence, topiaries, a garage door, a cinderblock wall, and electrical lines.鈥� Her wall works, fabricated in collaboration with her father, conjure feelings of suburban familiarity 鈥� a rose, a shrub, and residential greenery become the focal points of her rebar-mounted cement portraiture, a nod to the shared cultural knowledge cultivated by day laborers over domestic landscapes.
Calling upon her Tongva ancestry, Mercedes Dorame employs sculptural installation and photography to compose visual portals and ceremonial interventions in the land. Her hanging iridescent sculpture, Meeting You Between Worlds: Abalone Bridge - Aapoo Naamkomochot, IV, was produced in commission for the Getty Center鈥檚 inaugural Rotunda Commission, examining abalone鈥檚 vital role in the subsistence of California Native people. The mollusk functioned aesthetically in regalia and as part of ceremony, as well as a food source and material to produce fish hooks. Dorame recalls a question posed by a tribal elder in response to tribal borders, 鈥渨here does someone鈥檚 territory end and ours begin? Look at an abalone shell and tell me where the pink ends and where the green begins.鈥� Her photographic works Algae Portal - Shooxar Tukuupar andImprint - Xamee-evet I equally address absence and liminal space, as she applies a subtle alchemy to capture ephemeral gateways between the earth鈥檚 contours; shifting the viewer's perspective to unearth landscapes just beyond visibility.
Los Angeles-based artist Lizette Hern谩ndez works intuitively with clay, found glass, and organic materials to form lustrous sculptural works investigating sacred objects and their relationship to the terrestrial world. Her practice engages with elements of deep ecology 鈥� exploring the intersections of floral anatomies, religious iconography, and the ritual practices of remembrance. In her works, Deshaciendo and Pasando, Hern谩ndez reflects on the mystery and the sacredness of the land by approaching her medium as a living object. She sculpts in union with the Raku-fired clay, leaving delicate imprints on the material, allowing its memory to naturally permeate in the way "water escapes land forming dry cracks on the earth." As her Raku sculptures are not sealed with a cold finish, Hern谩ndez considers them still with life, suspended in transmutation as the glaze oxidizes the surface.
Esteban Ram贸n P茅rez, a skilled upholster and trained painter, draws from a distinct cultural archive to produce transgressive works engaged in postmodernist discourse, materiality, spirituality, and sociopolitical histories. He employs salvaged leather as his medium of choice, constructing luxurious hanging tapestries and hand-made framed works that subvert traditional notions of painted composition. P茅rez鈥檚 large-scale wall-work, Los Alacranes, depicts an imagined Mexican landscape, loosely mapping his grandmother鈥檚 migration from Durango to Sinaloa through an abstracted mosaic of reconstituted organic leather material. P茅rez鈥檚 work embodies elements of rasquache aesthetics through his resourcefulness, adornment, and embroidery; a method of art-making rooted in Chicano tradition, coined academically by Tomas Ybarra-Frausto. In tender homage to the livelihood from which his materials are derived, P茅rez prefers to work with flawed leather remnants, noting their scars and wrinkles as an allegory of an authentic life.
In Men Dig Those LA freeways, Lily Ram铆rez maneuvers procedural, cartographic marks and feathery strokes to produce an abstracted tapestry of Los Angeles鈥� highways, rivers, and cityscape; reflecting on the expanding urban infrastructure through which her father aspired upward mobility. Ramirez begins with geographical surveys of Southern California through Thomas Guide maps passed down by her father. Parsing memory and nostalgia, she pours over these guides, weaving the region鈥檚 graticules and intersections into the fiber of her canvas, revealing cerebral maps of spaces once inhabited, leaving her own thick, vigorously layered, monochromatic impressions. Her vibrant oil stick compositions on kozo paper zoom in on these coordinates and, through her emboldened experimentations with color and texture, offer an intimate counterpoint to the source material鈥檚 empirical perspective.
Curated by Kelley Camberos
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Various Small Fires is elated to announce the opening of Sublunary, a group presentation in the main gallery of our Los Angeles location examining Southern California鈥檚 transcendent natural terrain and dynamic social ecology. The exhibition unites the works of five artists: Jackie Castillo, Mercedes Dorame, Lizette Hern谩ndez, Esteban Ram贸n P茅rez, and Lily Ram铆rez. Ranging from photography, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, their cross-disciplinary works express a kinship with regional topographies 鈥� subverting these spaces through color, medium, organic materials, and abstracted form. Sublunary explores the landscape as a liminal space between nature and culture 鈥� one altered by human and non-human migration, urban expansion, colonial histories, and our intrinsic sensitivity to the elemental aesthetics of the region.
Jackie Castillo鈥檚 photographic works investigate the architectural landscape and distinct cultural zeitgeist of working-class ascension in her hometown, Anaheim, California. Through a double exposure made on 120mm color-positive film, Castillo鈥檚 floor-bound cerulean work, Between no space of mine and no space of yours, presents two views from the sidewalk. 鈥淭he image is merged onto foundation construction material and suggests two stairways moving past each other and the topographic rise of a new architecture through suburban vernacular鈥攁 broken down fence, topiaries, a garage door, a cinderblock wall, and electrical lines.鈥� Her wall works, fabricated in collaboration with her father, conjure feelings of suburban familiarity 鈥� a rose, a shrub, and residential greenery become the focal points of her rebar-mounted cement portraiture, a nod to the shared cultural knowledge cultivated by day laborers over domestic landscapes.
Calling upon her Tongva ancestry, Mercedes Dorame employs sculptural installation and photography to compose visual portals and ceremonial interventions in the land. Her hanging iridescent sculpture, Meeting You Between Worlds: Abalone Bridge - Aapoo Naamkomochot, IV, was produced in commission for the Getty Center鈥檚 inaugural Rotunda Commission, examining abalone鈥檚 vital role in the subsistence of California Native people. The mollusk functioned aesthetically in regalia and as part of ceremony, as well as a food source and material to produce fish hooks. Dorame recalls a question posed by a tribal elder in response to tribal borders, 鈥渨here does someone鈥檚 territory end and ours begin? Look at an abalone shell and tell me where the pink ends and where the green begins.鈥� Her photographic works Algae Portal - Shooxar Tukuupar andImprint - Xamee-evet I equally address absence and liminal space, as she applies a subtle alchemy to capture ephemeral gateways between the earth鈥檚 contours; shifting the viewer's perspective to unearth landscapes just beyond visibility.
Los Angeles-based artist Lizette Hern谩ndez works intuitively with clay, found glass, and organic materials to form lustrous sculptural works investigating sacred objects and their relationship to the terrestrial world. Her practice engages with elements of deep ecology 鈥� exploring the intersections of floral anatomies, religious iconography, and the ritual practices of remembrance. In her works, Deshaciendo and Pasando, Hern谩ndez reflects on the mystery and the sacredness of the land by approaching her medium as a living object. She sculpts in union with the Raku-fired clay, leaving delicate imprints on the material, allowing its memory to naturally permeate in the way "water escapes land forming dry cracks on the earth." As her Raku sculptures are not sealed with a cold finish, Hern谩ndez considers them still with life, suspended in transmutation as the glaze oxidizes the surface.
Esteban Ram贸n P茅rez, a skilled upholster and trained painter, draws from a distinct cultural archive to produce transgressive works engaged in postmodernist discourse, materiality, spirituality, and sociopolitical histories. He employs salvaged leather as his medium of choice, constructing luxurious hanging tapestries and hand-made framed works that subvert traditional notions of painted composition. P茅rez鈥檚 large-scale wall-work, Los Alacranes, depicts an imagined Mexican landscape, loosely mapping his grandmother鈥檚 migration from Durango to Sinaloa through an abstracted mosaic of reconstituted organic leather material. P茅rez鈥檚 work embodies elements of rasquache aesthetics through his resourcefulness, adornment, and embroidery; a method of art-making rooted in Chicano tradition, coined academically by Tomas Ybarra-Frausto. In tender homage to the livelihood from which his materials are derived, P茅rez prefers to work with flawed leather remnants, noting their scars and wrinkles as an allegory of an authentic life.
In Men Dig Those LA freeways, Lily Ram铆rez maneuvers procedural, cartographic marks and feathery strokes to produce an abstracted tapestry of Los Angeles鈥� highways, rivers, and cityscape; reflecting on the expanding urban infrastructure through which her father aspired upward mobility. Ramirez begins with geographical surveys of Southern California through Thomas Guide maps passed down by her father. Parsing memory and nostalgia, she pours over these guides, weaving the region鈥檚 graticules and intersections into the fiber of her canvas, revealing cerebral maps of spaces once inhabited, leaving her own thick, vigorously layered, monochromatic impressions. Her vibrant oil stick compositions on kozo paper zoom in on these coordinates and, through her emboldened experimentations with color and texture, offer an intimate counterpoint to the source material鈥檚 empirical perspective.
Curated by Kelley Camberos
Artists on show
