From Shape to Form
Frankenstein
studioZuniga.com
Exhibition Statement
Bilingualism has revealed conflict, bondage, intersection, and transformation. It enables me to interrogate signs, reinvent images and narratives through my fluency in Spanish and English. Drawing from my Mexican American heritage as both spectator and participant, I express my identity with signifiers and find inspiration in my understanding of socio-political events, personal narratives, musical compositions, color, pattern, and the hard and soft edge of form. My pallet vibrates with saturated hues from the Southwestern borderland; here riotous color celebrates cacophony, otherness and protest. Color is the trace of my memory, the stream of my experience, and gesture of my being.
For this exhibition, shape and form examine symbols of cohesion, bondage, trauma, and negligence. Grooming practices such as lineups, tapers, and fades are popular among Latino men; they are symbols of cohesion and bonding. Hair fashions have enabled them to express themselves as an individual or as a collective. Practices are then simplified into shape and form within the language of abstraction and representation expressing fluctuating markers.
The painting titled “Frankenstein” is a bricolage that haunts our present. White America's failure to hear and respect voices color has given birth to the character. The perception and reaction to the language spoken seem distant and incomprehensible.