Ramiro Gomezs work has actually playfully riffed on Californian classics to bring awareness to the absence of representation for the Chicano neighborhood in art
I n the 1960s, a young David Hockney , fixated with the sun and sensuality of the west coast, presented the world of classicism to the markers of Los Angeles domestic happiness. He was impressed by a selection of spotless modernist homes with yard pool and yards geared up with sprinklers, an overall novelty to an artist who had actually matured with English rain. His paintings took shape an ultimate picture of Los Angeles in pop culture, regardless of cannot record the whole photo.
Enter the work of Ramiro Gomez, a young LA painter born in California to 2 undocumented Mexican immigrants (who have actually because acquired legal citizenship). In 2014, he replicated Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, a painting of an LA yard seen beyond the pointer of a diving board, kept in mind for the indicated topic, most likely under the splashing water. For his variation No Splash, Gomez included the indicated characters; not the scuba diver, however a set of faceless, dark-skinned employees raking the water for pollutants and squeegee-cleaning your home’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Utilizing the exact same strategy, he consequently turned Hockney’s American Collectors into American Gardeners, and Beverly Hills Housewife into Beverly Hills Housekeeper. Diverting from Hockney’s concentrate on southern California elegance, Gomez’s painting calls attention to those whose labor is needed to preserve it, both as tribute and soft-spoken rebuke.
“I’ve been asked if I’m completing the space that David Hockney left out, or that art history itself is leaving out,” Gomez states in his sunny-hot LA studio, reclining in a luxurious armchair as streaks of paint dry on his denims and arms. “It’s both. It’s a method of broadening on David’s work and increasing that awareness of its restrictions; I’m discussing representation in art history and addition,” he includes, keeping in mind the work of artists of color such as Kerry James Marshall, or the Chicano LA activist collectives Los Four and Asco, as his predecessors.