RUBÉN ESPARZA “Piss + Blood & Spunk: Seminal Works 1993-2019” | 8th June | TOM House

Digital Flux (Santana Camefeo) 25, 26, 27, 2015-2018, Archival pigment print, 16″ x 16″ each

Rubén Esparza combines the skills of a multi-media artist and the insight of a gifted curator to synergize intensely cross-referential artworks. Queer AIDS tropes, phallocentrism, and bodily fluids become markers of LGBTQ+ culture from the early ’90s to the contemporary Trumpian zeitgeist.

GLoves (Blood Drive), a 1995 triptych, epitomizes many themes of Esparza’s oeuvre. The artist, culturally imprinted by a Latinx heritage, moved to Los Angeles from Houston, after his lover died of AIDS. To memorialize the death and cope with grief, Esparza secured a phlebotomist and invited friends to donate blood that he then dripped onto brightly hued latex gloves. Uniting the conceptual with the visual makes for an arresting, colorful overlay to a disturbing piece of activist art, swirling sadness and AIDS anger together in the same mixed-media piece.

Digital Flux, series, 2015-18, and the clever 2019 protest portrait of POTUS – Goon, Con, Troll – are harvested from a collection of objet trouvé internet images. Esparza downloads the pictures and manipulates them with dot matrixes and grids. Sometimes he paints semen and swashes of Warholian colors onto the faces of his subjects as an extension of his print photomontages. Hand-cut and pasted-up porn magazine pages graphically homoeroticize whimsical adorations of the penis. These analog collages form the underpinning to his digital pastiches that employ complex computer manipulations to create an inventive layering. Coded into these handmade amalgamations is a commentary heralded by a blast of hard-core queer smut from another time; together they retrieve a culture vanquished by the internet age. Esparza revivifies print porn as he creates outrageously sexual erotica that gives homage to a vanished genre of gay civilization.

This exhibition of 20 of Ruben Esparza’s most potent pieces includes a survey of the artists, art influencers and scenesters who frequent TOM House, and who Esparza has photographed in a collection of Polaroids. The most sensational shot being a self-portrait…floating in a mason jar of urine.

–Phil Tarley, curator

GLoves (Blood Drive), 1995, Mixed media, gloves, blood, mounted on acrylic, painted canvas with clear Lucite frame, 12″ x 12″ x 3″ each

Goon Con Troll (From x48 Trump series, 2016-2019, Mixed media, digital and analog artworks, Sizes variable

Rubén Esparza (b.1962) is a Los Angeles artist and curator. His work is part of the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Esparza is the founder and director of the Queer Biennial, an exhibition anchored in Los Angeles that surveys international queer and Latinx art. Grants and awards, include: Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, National Endowment for the Arts, West Hollywood Arts, Tom of Finland Foundation, City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office.

Self Portrait Piss Jar, 2019, Polaroid, urine and jar

“Besides Esparza’s self-portrait jar of piss, the exhibit features erotic queer polaroids, homoeroticized whimsical adorations of the penis, collage artworks taken from fast-disappearing porn magazines, and more! ‘Piss + Blood & Spunk’ is a commentary heralded by hardcore queer obscenity from another time, brought back into this internet age.” – Jessica Romoff, Flaunt

Reception: Saturday, 7 to 10p
Opening night events include performances and happenings by: Oscar David Alvarez, FleshPiece, Ridge Gallagher, Jordan Michael Green, Jamison Karon, Marval A Rex, and Sheree Rose.

FACEBOOK EVENT

On view by appointment through 6th July.

CHECKLIST

“Piss + Blood & Spunk: Seminal Works 1993-2019” – Terremoto

“Rubén Esparza Piss + Blood & Spunk, Seminal Works 1993–2019 is on view by appointment at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles through Monday, July 6. The solo exhibition presents work made by the L.A.-based Esparza over the past 25 years.” – The Editors of ARTnews

Performance photos by Miguel Angeles Reyes

Chicano artist reproduces historic LGBTQ protest signs.

Rubén Esparza’s unique style fuses painting, drawing, and digital work with elements of Chicano and Queer culture. Through his art, and curating of exhibitions, he promotes a strong sense of activism. In his project entitled “From the Archives to the Archives” reproduces LGBTQ protest signs from the ’60s through the ’90s.

Esparza currently has an exhibition on display in Los Angeles at the Tom of Finland Foundation, a hub for LGBTQ artists from around the world.

–By Anabel Munoz and Jose Mayorquin

Opening photos by Miguel Angeles Reyes

Published: 23rd May 2019

Categorised in: Art Offering