Brochure for "Bridging Homeboy Industries"

              Cover
Fabian Debora, Alex Kizu and Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez
Transformation of Spirits Exposed, 2012, (detail)
Acrylic, spray paint, paint markers on wood panel, 120 x120 inches
This page
Top
Alex Kizu
Sand Storm, 2012
Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
Bottom Left
Fabian Debora
Rest in Peace, 2010
Acrylic on canvas, 53 x 43 inches
Bottom Right
Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez
Relax, 2012
Bronze, 4.75 x 13 x 7 inches
Courtesy Timothy Yarger Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA
It has been indeed a singular privilege
for me to have known these three
artists, Fabian Debora, Alex Kizu and Juan
Carlos Muñoz Hernandez for over a quarter
of a century. I met them when they were
quite young and only beginning to discover
that they had this remarkable gift. Like
many young people in my community,
they struggled with the odds and found it
difficult to imagine a future. Violence, drug
abuse, and the daily dread of unspeakable
trauma was part of the air they all breathed
as they sought to find the truth of who they
are. They found their truth in their gift, in an
ability to create something beautiful and
powerful and soulful on the canvas, in the
sculpture, on the wall. Their truth is our truth:
we are all exactly what God had in mind
when God made us. To watch these three
men fully inhabit their truth is an inestimable
gift to us all. I’m proud to know them.
Greg Boyle, S.J.,
Founder and Executive Director, Homeboy Industries
There is no single aesthetic to define art
that grows out of urban grit or PAINTINGS MADE
ON THE FLY. Nor is there one way that individuals
overcome challenges including poverty and
comunity violence. As this exhibition reveals,
Fabian Debora, Alex Kizu, and Juan Carlos Muñoz
HERNANDEZ EACH DEVELOPED DISTINCT artistic
practices.
What these artists share are roots in Boyle Heights, a mentor in
Father Greg Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy
Industries, and a commitment both to their art practices and to
giving back to their communities. When we began planning for
this exhibition, each of the artists told a similar story of growing
up in and around the projects; art played a prominent role in
each of their lives, as did the nurturance of a neighborhood
priest. Reflecting on his youth, Kizu explained a time when, “I
got into a lot of trouble, but Father Greg, no matter what I did,
was always encouraging me to do my art.” This encouragement
extended to hiring these and other youth to paint murals
instead of graffiti. Muñoz Hernandez recalls that working
on community murals led to the opportunity to apply as an
apprentice to artist Robert Graham, a life-changing experience.
Debora sums up what each has explained in his own way,
“Father G was the first one who taught me to see my art not as
a path towards delinquency and incarceration, but rather as a
path out of the violence and hopelessness of gang life.” At an
artists’ meeting prior to this exhibition, I was moved when each
artist stated that his primary goal for the show was to inspire
youth. Their commitment to giving back—through art and by
mentoring others—evidences a powerful connection between
art and community.
Among the artists, Debora remains more strongly tied to
Homeboy Industries. After overcoming a battle with addiction,
he received accreditation as a drug counselor and joined
the staff at Homeboy in February 2007. During this time of
transformation, art remained a constant source of motivation
and focus. Lacking a formal education, Debora actively sought
out artist mentors, including the East Los Screetscapers and
artist Vincent Valdez. As a result of his perseverance, his work
developed rapidly. But even as his style changed, Debora
remained committed to depicting narratives from his life and
community. Representational paintings such as Pay Me No
Mind and Rest in Peace (both 2010) are characterized by a
dramatic use of light—not theatrical, but something more like
sunlight or a mystical ray—which serves to cast both hope and
authenticity on images with painful undertones. Writing
about the body of work, “Duality of Women” (2012), Debora
stated that he hopes his paintings “provide a voice to those
who have been silenced by society, violence or circumstances.”
This statement provides an apt lens through which to view all
of his art.
I first encountered Alex Kizu’s work in 2010 while serving as a
juror for the student show for the Art Department at California
State University, Northridge, from which Kizu graduated with
honors the following year. At the time, Kizu’s small canvases
stood out; and when Debora mentioned his work to me a
few weeks later, I immediately recalled his fiery dragons and
oceanic waves. Kizu integrates dynamic imagery inspired by
Japanese iconography and a layering of words and letters that
draws on his expansive knowledge of the scripts and alphabets
used in street art. The first works he showed me for this
exhibition expressed a transformation that mirrored his own—
from turbulent adolescent to successful student and artist—but
viewed from an expansive and reflective point of view. In
Eternal Warrior (2012), a powerful but ethereal tiger, seen in
profile, gazes out from a layered group of works rendered in
deep blues and blacks. Suggestive of a quiet, internal force,
this and other works provoke questions about how we define
strength as a society. Kizu’s art tends to derive from a spiritual
place; his most recent paintings feature ornate lettering made
via an intuitive process akin to visually speaking in tongues.
Juan Carlos Muñoz Hernandez left Boyle Heights nearly two
decades ago, when he began an 18-year apprenticeship with
the artist Robert Graham in Venice Beach until Graham’s death
in 2008. Muñoz Hernandez’s passionate and prolific practice
embraces painting, sculpture, and public works and is inspired
by diverse influences ranging from the human form, the urban
landscape, and maps of California. From his “Urban Hidden
Literature,” paintings on the streets of East Los Angeles, to
“Lexicon,” miniature sculptures embodying graffiti letters in
bronze, Muñoz Hernandez shifts and disrupts the expectations
of street art. For this exhibition, he created bronze sculptures
and paintings in larger scale. In “The Witness Edition” (2012),
boxy “witnesses” (structural supports used in the lost wax
process that are typically discarded) remain intact among
the otherwise sinuous lines and open spaces, metaphorically
connecting to the artist’s supporting role in Graham’s studio.
These works bear witness in a broader sense, too, questioning
accepted notions of who and what we choose to discard
and value.
Annie Buckley
Curator of the Exhibition
Buckley (Otis MFA ’03) is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist, author, art
critic, and Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at California State University,
San Bernardino.
Bridging Divides,
Speaking in Tongues,
Bearing Witness