Paisajes en tierra caliente
2006 - 2007
Landscape paintings and drawings are portals between interior and exterior. They are commonly found indoors but signify the outdoors. Mannered, as these works are, they not only point to an exterior but also, and most importantly, to an otherworldly site, Shangri-La, a psychologically charged non-site created by aspirations for a better place fueled by discontent with material reality. Most landscaping functions much in the same way as landscape paintings and drawings albeit a different economy of labor and exchange values. One is regulated by city codes and, in L.A. kept-up by a fleet of south-of-the-border immigrants doing dirty work. The other is maintained by Bourgeois aspirations for leisure manifested in plain-air traditions designed for contemplation. Both modes are ways of linking aspiration to an immediate material site.
