This year’s Christmas Exhibition is a departure from our yearly holiday show.
ChimMaya has asked Armando Duron, former president of Self-Help Graphics and Chicano Art Historian/Collector, to curate our show.
Armando’s unique vision for this special exhibition…brings together many of the most celebrated talents of the Chicano Art Movement and will introduce artists of special interest to our patrons and collectors.
Collector’s Choice will span the…Main/North Galleries…at ChimMaya.
West/East Galleries…ChimMaya has assembled a sampling of artists from this past year’s audience favorites.
Three shows, thirty artists, four galleries…over 30,000 lights, six Christmas trees, and thousands of ornaments in a festive holiday atmosphere that is uniquely ChimMaya
This special Holiday Show is a Thank You to our many friends, supporters and artists…that have given wings to our presence in the community.
It is with you, through you, and for you, we have continued on this journey.
Happy Holidays,
Steven Acevedo
Daniel Gonzalez
Exhibiting Artists: Main/North/West and East Galleries
Patssi Valdez, Magu, George Yepes, Yolanda Gonzalez, Emilia Garcia, Chaz Bojorguez, Samuel Baray, Linda Vallejo, Cesar A. Martinez, Leo Limon, Roberto Gutierrez, Victor Durazo, Alberto Castro, Rosa Magdalena, Carlos Bueno, Teddy Sandoval, Jose Lozano, Lorenzo Hurtado, Luis Genaro, Ramon Ramirez, Esther Hernandez, Juan Solis, Maria Kane, Gilbert Reyes, Ricardo Ortega, Gennaro Garcia, Rudy Andrade, Hector Silva, Anita Miranda, Cristina Acosta
rsvp@chimmaya.com
(please rsvp with name and number of guests attending)
Collector’s Choice
curator’s statement…Armando Duron
ChimMaya is a unique gallery very much in keeping with the ebb and flow of life in East Los Angeles. In stark contrast to the white cube design of most galleries, ChimMaya’s vibrant colors, original designed furnishings, and even its unintentional ‘loss-leader’ boutique, all contribute to an environment that welcomes the potential art buyer in. This environment fits well within the social structure that seems to uniquely characterize East Los Angeles. What James Rosas describes as “an intense social relationship rather than a social obligation” appears regularly at the twice-monthly new exhibition openings. ChimMaya began as a boutique specializing in handbags, furniture, fashion jewelry and interior design. It is now a hub of the artistic life of the Eastside.
It is in this environment that the ‘Collector’s Choice’ exhibition was conceived. When Steven Acevedo asked me to curate this exhibition, he gave me free reign to conceive of a show that I felt would be appropriate for the space at this time. This gave me an idea about something that had been bugging me for a long time. The collector base is often ignored and/or taken for granted. Little effort is made to educate or assist the collector in developing his or her passion. ‘Collector’s Choice’ is a small opportunity to alter that equation. The exhibition is split into two parts. In the main gallery, artists were invited to produce new work with this specific charge:
Through this exercise I seek to draw out the refined and essential line in your work, the point of your artistic existence. What I seek is for you to reach into deeper levels of your aesthetic consciousness, out of your comfort zone, to produce a new work that is from another part of your essence, the part that because of economic, political, social or simple time pressures, you haven’t been able to get to lately. By refined I mean something that is shed of its adornments and is beyond beauty and ugliness. You should seek to exemplify the disinterestedness and purposelessness of the clear, perhaps unconscious mind. It is neither the formal qualities of your work or a particular image that I am seeking to draw out here. Therefore, there is no one ‘look’ or a theme. This in not, for example, a Christmas show.
Gallery artists, as well as some artists who have not exhibited at ChimMaya, were invited to submit work for the exhibition. The resulting exhibition presents some innovative works from artists who have stretched beyond their usual mediums and themes and iconography.
The second part of the space is taken up by a show of artwork solicited from collectors who are ready to part with certain works. The attempt here is to promote the development of a secondary market in Chicano art, something that largely remains a distant goal. The first collectors of Chicano art are largely people who are not ready to part with the works they began acquiring in their early twenties and thirties, many with which they have deep emotional connections. But the full development of respect for Chicano art demands that a secondary market be fully activated. It is hopeful that this exhibition helps in that endeavor.
ChimMaya
5283 East Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90022 / 323.869.8881