Reading 2: Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.

Link: https://deitch.com/new-york/exhibitions/alfonso-gonzlez-jr-this-was-here

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. makes paintings about the everyday visuals of working-class neighborhood locales in Los Angeles. His creations are deeply connected with the city due to the hand-painted signs, old cars, and streets that look both very real and very dreamlike. While generally there is no depiction of actual humans in his paintings, the idea of a human presence is very strong-the residual marks left behind by just the ordinary folks doing their daily grind. A lot of the information for his paintings comes from his amalgamation of memory, photography, and experience-from his life growing up and working through the city.

What I like about Gonzalez's work is that it does not try to hide away or make pretty. Instead, it embraces the chaos and weirdness of the city-oddities like billboards advertising for car insurance or accident lawyers. His work is a bit like a time capsule that really does capture the genuine look of Los Angeles, especially those areas that never make it onto the big screen. I also really admire that he did not go the traditional art school forging route and kept an independent attitude that he learned through working on the road, painting signs, and such. This lends his work a sort of boot-strapped, honest feel that a lot of other artists just don't get.