Steppling Art Gallery presents Elias — Fontes Collection
For this exhibition, visual artist Adrián Pereda Vidal dug into the Elias+Fontes Collection, an extensive private collection of contemporary art from Baja California that is housed both in Mexicali and the Imperial Valley, and selected more than 25 works by Tijuana artist Jaime Ruiz Otis.
The selected works are paintings, prints, sculptures, reliefs and collages that belong to ‘Las Sobras’, an ongoing series that Jaime Ruiz Otis started in 1999 and that continues to grow—there’s a couple of pieces in the exhibition dated 2016.
Similar to Pereda’s diggings in the Elias-Fontes Collection, in ‘Las Sobras’, Ruiz Otis rummages for waste byproducts or leftover materials from maquiladoras that he then transforms into visually enthralling and eclectic works.
In them, industrial stickers used for product identification and microcircuits become elements for pattern collages that are reminiscent of mandalas; metal foils function as the ubiquitous gilded gold found in art from the Middle Ages; foam packaging inserts and parabolic dishes serve as support for mixed media paintings made out of acrylic, printer toner, and other discarded materials; industrial iron is used as metal plates for printmaking, and plastic crates work as the raw material for sculpture.
Ruiz Otis’ approach to art making can be traced back to the avant-garde art movements of the 20th century.
In his work, one can find resemblances to the Dadaists’ use of non-art materials, the assemblages of the 1940-50s, the use of discarded consumer products in environments, happenings and installation art from the 1960s, Arte Povera in Italy and the industrial materials employed for fabrication by Minimalist artists.
But Ruiz Otis’ production is also part of a tradition of young artists in Mexico that in the 1990s opted for a do-it yourself approach that resulted in poetic reconfigurations of everyday and waste materials with political overtones.
When Ruiz Otis started his series in the late 1990s, he responded to the dramatic change in the geography of Tijuana caused by the presence of transnationals and maquiladoras after the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
He made use of the debris of industrial parks for his production and replaced the assembly line by handmade labor that produces one of a kind ‘art’ objects.
Ruiz Otis was born in Mexicali in 1976. He has shown his work in one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Art in General, New York; Galeria La Caja Negra, Madrid; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo-Universidad
If you go
Gallery Thursday, 5:30-8 p.m. and by appointment (thru May 6) Where 720 Heber Ave., Calexico, CA 92231
Info Please email: luis.hernandez@mail.sdsu.edu Event co-sponsored by the Associated Student Council Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico City; Sala de Arte Universidad Autonoma de Baja California, Tijuana, among others.
He has participated in group exhibitions extensively in Mexico and the U.S, as well as in cities such as Frankfurt, Germany; Zurich, Switzerland; Santiago de Chile; Beijing, China; Moscow, Russia; Madrid, Spain; Cuenca, Ecuador; etc. Ruiz Otis’ work is included in the permanent collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo-UNAM, Mexico City, and The Elias+Fontes Collection.