Charlie James Gallery is set to unveil a new group exhibition that acts as a love letter to each artist’s idealized home. Curated by Los Angeles-based artist Ever Velasquez, Provócame invites creatives of various backgrounds from the U.S., Puerto Rico, Albania and Mexico to probe into the notion of what constitutes a home, from the physical to the imagined, the archival to the ancestral.
Patrick Martinez, the LA-based artist whose mixed media works comment on the slow erasure of his home city’s latin and chicano communities, presents a slice of a wall painted in seafoam green with verdant and floral embellishments. “It’s about the in-between,” Martinez previously told Hypeart. “I want my work to look like it’s either being discovered or erased,” adding that he finds inspiration in the work and teachings of Robert Rauschenberg and how “he was speaking about people not really understanding what is really present in their environment. They’re not really looking. So I want people to look when they see the work and see what they are missing currently, because that’s not always going to be here.”
“While essentially a ‘love letter’,” wrote Charlie James Gallery, “Provócame is simultaneously a bittersweet Dear John, encompassing the loss that lives inside any change, however small. These artists channel the passion and grit necessary to overcome day to day struggles inflicted on their communities while celebrating the beauty that flourishes and survives within.”
For those in LA, the exhibition will open on Friday, August 2 and run through September 7, 2024.
Charlie James Gallery
969 Chung King Rd,
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Exhibiting Artists
Zoe Alameda
Felipe Baeza
Lars Bergquist
Autumn Breon
Melissa Calderón
Alejandro Cartagena
Chloe Chiasson
Ashley Cole
Emilia Cruz
Danielle De Jesus
Lisa Edelstein
Uber Lopez Enamorado
rafa esparza
Victor Estrada
Elsa Flores
Maya Fuji
Roberto Gil de Montes
Lexis Victoria Gomez
Tanya Haden
Hannah Huntley
Saj Issa
Andrés Janacua
Patrick Martinez
Alan Mendez
Ade Ogunmowo
Willbert Olivar & Lalo Avila
Mariana Ramos Ortiz
Angel Perdomo
Vincent Ramos
John Rivas
Abel Rodriguez
Irgin Sena
Kim Sweet
Georgina Treviño
Sam Wohl