I was at the art murmur in oakland last night. I have been hearing about this buzz recently and I’m glad to be part of it. Our show traidor is hanging at esteban sabar gallery. I also heard a lot of negative things about this gallery. This gallery they say is too commercial and hangs ‘inferior’ artworks. I walked around art murmur and found out that much of the art hanging at the galleries are pretty much the same so I don’t understand why somebody would degrade esteban sabar.
What I noticed is that a lot of the people who look at the art seem to really ‘dig’ the artworks. I have been an artist for almost forty years but I still cannot understand most of the paintings. If somebody would write heavy stuff about a door I saw leading to a bathroom in one of the galleries, that door could be a masterpice.
I have done my pieces on cardboard boxes mainly because I could not afford a canvas and it really worked for me because I am a third world artist. Those rugged boxes have the appearance of inferiority. I don’t delve too much on drawing anymore. I have proven to myself that I can draw so I turn to subject matter. For me, I can use low quality materials as long as I get my message across. Those expensive art materials conspire with ‘art’ and I don’t have to follow it.
I think the advantage of being a third world artist is that we have an overflowing sense of reality. I can see a lot of pretensions. I’m not saying this is bad. I’m just curious why I didn’t see any artwork that represent oakland. There are drive-by shootings nearby and here we are looking at art that we don’t understand.
I heard people who represent art murmur mostly came from san francisco. Most of them are artists who got evicted from sf because of gentrification and now they are gentrifying oakland because of art. Art is elitist so it attracts people who have the luxury of having time for art. I know as a third world person that most poor people don’t have the luxury of having art in their lives because their priority is to have food on their tables.
One nice thing happened to me last night though. No I didn’t sell a painting. One guy came up to me and blessed me and my paintings because they were done in cardboard boxes. He’s doing the same and his artworks cannot get in galleries because they’re done on cardboards so he spread his artworks outside the gallery. He said esteban sabar must be a cool gallery for accepting my paintings. But it’s not just the cardboards. There’s a lot more to it.
Lian ladia curated our show. Traidor! Also features works by england hidalgo, marcius noceda and carlo ricafort. it will run up to the end of this month so check it out if you have the ‘time’ :-)
