Mitchell Algus Gallery (Exhibitions, Information)
132 Delancey St (entrance on Norfolk), 2nd Fl, New York 10002
tel: 516-639-4918 office@mitchellalgusgallery.com
Hours: By appointment through August, 2022
Victor Estrada
In association with Richard Telles, Los Angeles
The gallery is open Fridays and Saturdays, 12-6 pm, and by appointment
Flowering Tree and Duck in a Landscape, 2017, Oil on canvas over panel, 18″ x 24″
The Mitchell Algus Gallery in association with Richard Telles presents an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Victor Estrada. The exhibition will open on Friday, April 8 with a reception for the artist the following day, Saturday, April 9 from 4 to 7 p.m. At the present time gallery hours are Fridays and Saturdays from 12 to 6 p.m. and by appointment.
Victor Estrada (b. 1956, Burbank, CA) is a Mexican-American artist and teacher living and working in Los Angeles whose career has spanned over three decades. Estrada’s work first came to national attention in Paul Shimmel’s era-defining 1992 exhibition Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Here, the Estrada’s monumental sculpture Baby Baby (1992) emerged as an icon of Los Angeles’ then-emerging alternative art scene. The artist has had solo exhibitions at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York and the Shoshana Wayne and Richard Telles Galleries in Los Angeles. He is the subject of an upcoming survey, Purple Mexican, at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, CA, his alma mater. The current exhibition is Estrada’s first solo gallery exhibition in New York since 1996.
American Zombie, 2000’s, pencil on paper, 9″ x 12.25″
Victor Estrada’s hypnagogic landscapes depict a psychological borderland spanning the arid southwest from Los Angeles to El Paso, “…[the] two different locations where my self resides.” Fascinated by the cluttered – “not curated” – yards that nestle beside the region’s modest homes, Estrada orchestrates such cultural residue into art: “My in-laws…like to collect things: tree trunks, this owl that’s hanging from a tree, plastic animals, a rabbit with one eyeball out.” Like these emphatic homeowners, Estrada articulates a personal landscape, drawing freely from the local lives and life sources he grew up with. Lowrider and kustom kulture softly intersects with backcountry punk and evangelical Christianity, all in lives consumed by labor and family. His art thus fains contemporary and Gothic – Von Dutch via van Eyck.
Drawing/Proposal for Baby/Baby, to be made for “Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s,” 1992, pencil, colored pencil on graph paper, 26″ x 46″
In addition to recent paintings and drawings, the show includes a historic touchstone: Estrada’s 1992 proposal drawing for his sculpture depicting him and his twin brother, Baby/Baby (1992), that was made specifically for the Helter Skelter exhibition. Of this piece LA Times critic Christopher Knight writes: “And almost out of nowhere–he’s shown only twice before–Victor Estrada has risen to the present occasion with a powerful, monumentally theatrical sculpture of cast foam, called “Baby/Baby.” Two clown-headed creatures, grinning and frowning as mutant signs of comedy and tragedy, recline in a vivid purple room while, between them, a tumescent column rises up, part monstrous phallus and part mushroom cloud. It’s an unspeakable image.”
Baby/Baby installation at Helter Skelter: LA Art in the 1990s, 1992, foam, steel armature, drippily painted purple walls, Mexican Mother’s Day plaque, 12′ x 16′ x 8′ (dismantled)