Wanderscapes. Crosswalking in Los Angeles is about me exploring a city that I have never been before and transforming the findings of this exploration into art objects. My visit to Los Angeles was due to the invitation of Fosforita Madrid to take part a the group show at the Durden and Ray gallery. Under the title Fashion District, named after the neighborhood around the historical Bendix Building where the gallery is located, the exhibition examined artistically the gentrification of the area, well known for its fashion and accessories stores run mostly by Hispanic Americans.
My first approach was to study the area and how people move in. Looking at the city’s map, I realized that the grid-built urban fabric makes it easier to navigate in. With long avenues and numbered streets, the city has been designed for moving by car, not by foot. In The Lost Art of Walking, Geoff Nicholson wrote that only insane and poor people walk in LA. In this specific context, I found an opportunity for experimenting with my walk art practice: to explore the city by food and to create artworks in situ before the exhibition opens.
I walked a lot. Sometimes with a personal purpose, sometimes by following my friends. I explored the city in order to make known to me the city signs, the mood and the local culture. I discovered that LA is a city of contrasts, a city where luxurious and clean areas are located two blocks from the poor and neglected areas. I met local collectives like CrosswalksLA that work on painting crosswalks in the city because many people die in crashes by cars. I participated in the weekly Black Lives Matter´s demonstration. I watched the football match El Clásico together with the local Barcelona followers´ association. I visited art museums and galleries where I could learn how LA artists express themselves, either with street art or in the art market. I strolled in McArthur Park, Skid Row, from Santa Monica to Venice Beach, the Walk of Fame and DownTown. This act of wandering through a specific territory generated new stimuli which in turn produced new ideas in the artistic process. The findings and encounters become motifs of the lived experience.
During this study process, I translated my reflections into two series for the show:
Grafito Acrílico en Papel (GAP)
Acrílico Canvas en Mix (ACM)
This project is part of Wanderscapes’ series. FASHION DISTRICT was curated by Eva Zaragozá and le frère (Fosforita Madrid) and includes the work of Arezoo Bharthania, le frère, Juanma González, Tatiana Nazarova, Daniela Soberman, Eva Zaragozá.