The knowledge of what happened in the location changes the interpretation of the images.

The third body of work, entitled “Profiled”, are images of statues and busts devoid of backgrounds suggestive of the ways race has been depicted throughout art history. Gonzales-Day photographed on site in museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Field Museum and L’ecole des Beaux-Arts, and has assembled a collection of images of artifacts that suggest the way people of color have been profiled.
 

The drawings employ ink, ink wash, graphite and white out on Canson paper, and measure 8.5 x 5.5 inches each (21.5 x 13.9 cm). Crosthwaite's drawings will join LACMA's collection of approximately thirty thousand works from Western Europe and America, ranging from some of the earliest examples of printing, in the fifteenth century, to contemporary graphics - with a special emphasis on Southern California artworks since 1960.

Allowing the act of drawing to organically dictate his compositions, Hugo Crosthwaite juxtaposes a wide range of textural and tonal ranges against spaces that alternate from dense and atmospheric to flat and graphic. Crosthwaite alternates between mythological subjects and contemporary ones, often combining the two. Francisco Goya, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Doré, Jose Guadalupe Posada, and Arnold Böcklin are among the many artists that have inspired his work. The joining of abstraction with classically-rendered imagery creates a feeling of spontaneity and vagueness; each work becomes an enfoldment of personal vision in which reality, history, and mythology collide as he explores the complexities of human emotion and expression.

This winter, Crosthwaite will participate in The Very Large Array, a survey of San Diego and Tijuana Artists in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Behold, America! at the San Diego Museum of Art; and The New World at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, Chaffey College, Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Other recent exhibitions and projects include the epic mural "Death March" (10 by 25 feet), commissioned for Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection (2012) at the Chicago Cultural Center; Brutal Beauty: Drawings by Hugo Crosthwaite, a solo exhibition in 2010 at the San Diego Museum of Art; TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and El Grito/The Cry for Freedom, Univ. of Arkansas, Little Rock, AK.

Hugo Crosthwaite was born 1974 in Tijuana and lives and works in Rosarito, Mexico and Brooklyn, NY. Crosthwaite graduated from San Diego State University in 1997 with a BA in Applied Arts. His works are in the permanent collections of the Miami Art Museum, FL; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL; and San Diego Museum of Art, CA, and many prominent private collections world wide.

The Gallery will present new works by Hugo Crosthwaite at the PULSE Miami Contemporary Art Fair, Booth B102, from December 6 - 9, 2012. The fair is located at The Ice Palace, 1400 N. Miami Avenue, Miami, FL. For further information and images, please contact us at 310-838-6000, or email gallery@luisdejesus.com.  

The project was commissioned by the Olin Art Foundation for Borders and Imaginary Cultures 2012.

Borders and Imaginary Cultures 2012, whose aim is to reflect on borders through culture, is a cultural initiative sponsored by the Olin Art Foundation (Fundación Arte Olín, A.C.), in collaboration with the Frida Kahlo Museum, Diego Rivera-Anahuacalli Museum, the National Sound Archive, and the College of the North Frontier-Coyoacán.

Borders and Imaginary Cultures will be held in various locations throughout Coyoacan from November 15-18, 2012, and offer residents of greater Mexico City a series of programs that seek to explore the role and impact of art and culture upon international borders. The program will open on Thursday, November 15, at 5pm, at the Frida Kahlo Museum and include lectures, musical performances, and art exhibitions and workshops in various locations in Coyoacan. The opening will also include a new site-specific sculptural intervention created by Tijuana-based artist Marcos Ramirez Erre on the interior and exterior of the Caza Azul, Frida Khalo Museum.

The Borders and Imaginary Cultures initiative is the result of a common interest in understanding—through the perspective of researchers, musicians and artists—the role that borders play in the world, in the establishment of relationships between countries, and the need to join together in an effort to destroy the stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination that impede dialog and channels of communication. Another objective of this project seeks to look at how nations use culture to promote and preserve their identity, while emphasizing the role that art and cultural interventions play as important unifying ingredients upon border cultural processes.

On Friday, November 16, the symposium “World Borders and Cultural Processes: National States and Cultural Frontiers”, will be held at the National Sound Archive and include a lecture by philosopher Néstor García Canclini of the Autonomous Metropolitan University. Two panel discussions are also scheduled to take place: the first, themed “Arts Trans/Border”, will be held at 12 pm. Speakers include Jose Manuel Valenzuela, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Amelia Malagamba, Arizona State University, Norma Iglesias, San Diego State University, and Rosalva Hernandez, Ciesas-Mexico. The second panel, “Influences and Cultural Practices”, will begin at 3 pm and include Teddy Cruz, University of California San Diego, Fiamma Cordero Di Montezemolo, Berkeley University, and Alfredo Nateras, Autonomous Metropolitan University.

In addition, from Friday, November 16 through Sunday, November 18, the Forum and the Museum Diego Rivera-Anahuacalli will present a number of musical groups that also explore artistic and cultural borders, including Stancia Orbit (Tijuana), The Rhythm Club (Mexico City), Madame Ur and his Men (Tijuana), Broken Hearts (Mexico City), and Sol de Ambar (Mexico City).

Admission to these events is free and space is limited. More information is available on www.arteolin.org (This release was translated from the Spanish.)
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