San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Brothers in art, looking to the future
For binational siblings Einar and Jamex de la Torre, artistic collaboration has been a lifelong journey
For those of us who have siblings, it’s likely we remember a time where one of those siblings was our partner within the land of make-believe. They may have helped us ward off an attacking dragon or an evil wizard, or perhaps they were simply our plus-one at an exclusive tea party. Either way, siblings are often much more than default playmates, they’re our ride-or-die.
The fact that Jamex and Einar de la Torre are still playing in the proverbial sandbox together after nearly 60 years is a testament to their unique bond. Together, they create astonishing and imitable art pieces that thread the lines between Mexican pop culture, Indigenous folk art and sci-fi psychedelia.
And whereas most of us have not ventured back to the imaginary worlds of our childhood in quite a long time, the de la Torre brothers are racking up incalculable frequent-flyer miles, creating alternative universes that still deal in earthly matters.
“It’s pretty horrendous to be a lone creator with all this weight on your shoulders,” says Jamex. “It can be very liberating.”
“It weirdly had to do with glass that we first started to collaborate on art,” says Einar, referring to one of the more prominent mediums (glass-blowing) that the de la Torre brothers incorporate within their works. He goes on to explain that it was when the brothers were attending Cal State Long Beach together that they learned the tedious and accident-prone practice of glass-blowing.
“Glass requires a lot of help and collaboration in order to produce something,” Einar says. “So it was a reciprocal thing. I think that eventually translated into the studio time, where I’d be working on something and I was stuck. So I’d turn to him and he could be like, ‘Oh, wait, why don’t you do this or that?’ Eventually we learned to tell each other to go for it.”
And they’ve been going for it ever since. Over the past 30-plus years, the de la Torre brothers’ art has become some of the most recognized in San Diego. They are, if anything, folk art heroes. From public art to large-scale installations inside local institutions such as the San Diego Central Library, it’s likely most locals have encountered a de la Torre brothers piece even if they didn’t know who created it.
“We learned very early on, as well, that you can’t do it halfway,” said Einar. “We got that out of the way early on.”
In addition to being collaborators, they’re also — at least for the time being — a binational duo. One lives in San Diego and the other near Ensenada, Mexico. They’re seemingly always busy, especially lately.
Most substantially, the brothers were the subject of the first retrospective exhibition at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture at the Riverside Art Museum. Held in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino and set to tour both nationally and internationally, the exhibition, pun-tastically titled “Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-perspective,” was awe-inspiring in both scope and size.
“It was a huge honor,” Jamex says. “This has put us in a spotlight in the context of Chicano and Mexican American art that we’ve never had before.”
“It’s pretty cool we’re in the Smithsonian and we’re not dead yet,” he adds, laughing.
The exhibition featured more than 30 years’ worth of their work, including a 27-feet lenticular image