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Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective features 40 mixed-media works, including blown-glass sculptures and installation art, plus some of the artists’ latest lenticulars with imagery that changes as the viewer moves from side to side.
Born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, México, and now living both in San Diego and Baja California, brothers and collaborating artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre have navigated life on both sides of the border since they were young and have inherited their own unique vision of the Latinx experience and American culture. Their work is visually complex and infused with humorous elements exploring art, history, and material culture. Working with glass, resin, lenticular prints and found objects, the brothers create work inspired by Mexican folk art, popular culture, religious imagery, consumer culture, and mythology. Many elements of the exhibition, including the title and curatorial framework, try to echo the creative process of the artists, serving as an allegory of their intellectual pursuits, their technical use of materials and media, and their use of wordplay and poetic riddles.
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Oxymodern (Aztec Calendar) by Einar and Jamex de la Torre, 2002 (Courtesy of the Cheech Marin Collection and Riverside Art Museum), blown-glass, mixed-media wall installation, 120x120x12 in. |
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino will travel its ¡Descubra! family program with Collidoscope to offer hands-on Create-It! activities as well as highlight local Latino artists. Educators and families can .
The exhibition was made possible through a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Latino and The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of Riverside Art Museum. Support for the national tour was generously provided by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino. Additional support was provided by The Mellon Foundation, the Texas Commission on the Arts, Carol Johnson, The Carol Jean MacGuire Foundation, the estate of Lineaus Hooper Lorette and 海角社区 College of Liberal Arts.
This model was created by the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino in collaboration with the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso. |
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| Photo by Josue Castro |
Collaborating artists and brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre were born in Guadalajara, México (1963 and 1960, respectively) where they grew up until their family moved to California in 1972. They both studied at California State University at Long Beach and taught at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. Currently, the brothers live and work on both sides of the border (Ensenada, Baja California, México and San Diego, California). Since the mid-1990s, the brothers have collaborated in earnest and worked together to develop their signature style of mixed-media work with blown-glass sculpture and lenticular printing. Their pieces represent a multifaceted view of life that reflects a complex and humorous aesthetic that could be seen as baroque. Influences range from religious iconography to German expressionism while also paying homage to Mexican vernacular arts and pre-Columbian art. To date they have had 18 solo museum exhibitions in six different countries, completed eight major public art projects and have participated in four biennales. Their work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Cheech Marin Collection and they are recipients of the USA Fellowship Award, the San Diego Art Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, among other honors. The de la Torre brothers are represented by Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Seattle, Washington. To learn more, visit .
A Los Angeles-based independent curator, Selene Preciado has worked at the Getty Foundation since 2015. Preciado’s 海角社区 interests include contemporary art and post-1960s conceptualist vanguards such as feminist art and performance art, with a special focus on Latin American art and its diaspora in the United States. Past curatorial projects include “Ser todo es ser parte/To be Whole is to be Part,” Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (2020); “Customizing Language,” the inaugural exhibition of the Emerging Curators Program at LACE, co-curated with Idurre Alonso (2016); “José Montoya’s Abundant Harvest: Works on Paper/Works on Life,” Fowler Museum at UCLA, co-curated with Richard Montoya (2016); “In Search of an Exit (or Eight Characters in a Parlor),” Heritage Square Museum, co-curated with the USC MA Class of 2015 (2015); “MIXTAPE” (2013); and “Anywhere Better than this Place” (2012) at MOLAA. Prior to her current post, she worked as a curatorial 海角社区 assistant at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), in 2013–2015. She worked at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) from 2009 to 2013 as an assistant curator. From 2005 to 2008, she worked as an exhibitions assistant at Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT), as a curatorial assistant at the San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA), and an exhibition coordinator for inSite_05. Preciado obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego, and holds a Master of Arts in Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere from the University of Southern California. Her master’s thesis examined the first years of production of feminist Mexican artist Mónica Mayer.
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