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LOS ANGELES – Their dogs play together between canvases, drop cloths and spray cans. They get into cars on their journeys to each other’s exhibitions far away. Sometimes they share paint supplies.
In an often competitive art world, the painters who come to share a studio in the Boyle Heights neighborhood represent an unconventional model of how artists can nurture and support one another.
“I didn’t feel connected to other artists before,” she said. Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., one of the studio’s tenants. “Then I met these guys. They get it.”
Over the past few years, Gonzalez, Mario Ayala, Devin Reynolds, Rafa Esparza, and Sonya Sombreuil and others – most in their 30s – have found their way into an ordinary warehouse on South Anderson Street near the Los Angeles River.
Their studio in Boyle Heights, which has become a haunt of galleries (hence complaints about gentrification), reflects the energy that comes in part from a new generation of Mexican-American artists.
“Something big is going on in the culture that is emerging right now,” said Jeffrey Deitch, the gallerist who has showcased the studio’s many artists. “LA is mostly Latino, so it will have more and more influence.”
Although they each rent different sized workspaces and have different painting styles, the artists are easily in and out of each other’s studios, chatting and offering advice when asked.
“Just being able to share space helps with all the stress,” said Reynolds, who combined pictures and text similar to dreamy murals. “I’m grateful to be here now with so many people pushing the boundaries with their paintings.”
A few of the artists have recently appeared in Deitch’s acclaimed film.shattered glass“Show recently as in Los Angeles”Made in Los Angeles. 2020” biennial at the Hammer and Huntington museums.
For example, Ayala for “Made in LA” focus Underground magazine “Teen Angels” documenting late 20th century cholo culture, featuring artwork, photography and essays by gang-related or imprisoned Chicanos.
Including “Shattered Glass” two Ayala paintings behind the pickup trucks were images of flying saucers, cacti, dice, and gun barrels.
“I’m looking for groups of artists, not just individual talent,” said Deitch, a longtime gallerist. “If you go to the beginnings of modernism and beyond, artistic innovators are almost always part of the community, from Matisse, Picasso and Braque to Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists.
“This is far beyond a traditional studio where just one artist works on paintings,” Deitch continued. “They go around each other’s studios, promoting each other.”
What the artists have in common is sign painting, graffiti, airbrush techniques, truck stops and lowrider car culture. They are into music, fashion and skateboarding. They paint their families, friends and neighborhoods, the people and places that have shaped them.
Ayala’s father is a truck driver. Gonzalez’s father is a billboard painter. Reynolds’ father worked on a fishing boat. This legacy shows up again and again in his work.
Gonzalez painted beauty salons and barber shops. “I see these as landscapes,” he said. “I am interested in how the community is changing. I wanted to paint people who looked familiar.”
Gonzalez said he got tired of painting signs and started learning about artists on YouTube, particularly inspired by Cy Twombly and Ed Ruscha. “A Rothko will remind me of a big graffiti-lover sign,” he said. “I made art as long as I could pay my rent and art supplies.”
Gonzalez joined the Boyle Heights studio in 2020, where he says he pays about $2,000 a month. rent. “I put everything I did back into this,” he said.
Rafa Esparza working on handmade adobe bricks – a skill he learned from his father – not long ago mass MOCAhe has to go through Ayala’s studio to get to him – He said “daily checks” allow for “unique conversation about our work”.
Some of the group had formal art training, including Ayala, who graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2014 and joined the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture that same year, and Reynolds, who earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Tulane University in 2014. 2017.
“It creates this fusion between traditional and industrial painting techniques,” Deitch said, “between veterans and automakers.”
Some artists have gallery representation. (Matthew Brown recently acquired Gonzalez; Kordansky Gallery acquired Ayala.)
“Alfonso recognizes aspects of the LA landscape that we often overlook and uses them to create his own visual language that feels both familiar and completely new,” said Brown.
His paintings sell for relatively modest numbers – paper drawings by Reynolds for about $2,500; His paintings cost about $65,000. Gonzalez said he was paid between $10,000 and $50,000.
“I see a lot of people’s markets skyrocket,” Gonzalez said. “I’m not interested in the money, I’m worried about where it’s placed and that I can do it for the rest of my life.”
They do their best to go to each other’s exhibitions; they traveled Ayala’s show with Henry Gunderson at Ever Gold [Projects] Her gallery was in San Francisco last summer, and she plans to attend Ayala’s show at Deitch’s New York gallery in September.
Last August, Gonzalez and her partner Diana Yesenia Alvarado curated a two-day pop-up show, “The City Is Too Hot”, featuring some artists currently working in Southern California. Gonzalez has first solo exhibition At Matthew Brown in February. Reynolds’ show It opened at the Palm Springs Art Museum on April 22.
For Made in LA, Sombreuil has created a gallery, performance space, music venue, screening room and showcase, featuring her own limited edition products. (She runs the fashion label Come on T-shirt.) said her Boyle Heights studio helped her reconnect to her roots as an artist. “It’s a cross-pollination of ideas and a traffic flow that benefits everyone,” Sombreuil said.
This traffic flow invites Sombreuil’s brother Noah, a furniture manufacturer, and Fulton Leroy Washington Wash (known as Mr. Wash) began painting while serving a sentence on a nonviolent drug offense, and has also appeared in the Hammer biennial and “Shattered Glass.” Working in the studio enabled Washington to create a large canvas he couldn’t fit into his apartment workspace and connect with other artists.
“Being in prison, I didn’t have the experience of being this talented,” he said. “Art completes art. It is truly inspiring.”
It shows up on friendship canvases. Contrary to the winking comments from artists like Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Marcel Duchamp, there is serious humanity in what they do. “There is no irony in this work,” Deitch said. “It represents a very important change in the approach of the younger generation to art.
“Because of the culture of seeing the world on the iPhone screen, there is a deep desire to go back to something connected to real life,” he added. “The works of all these artists are connected to real life.”
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