“At the Edge of the Sun” at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles
February 24–June 1, 2024
Nearly half of Los Angeles’s population identified as Hispanic or Latino during the 2020 US census, but blue-chip galleries in this city have only rarely shown, let alone officially represented, Latinx artists—a trend reflective of the US art market more broadly. At its LA gallery space, Jeffrey Deitch began to rectify this lacuna in its own programming with “At the Edge of the Sun,” an exhibition that brought together 12 LA-based artists. Crucially, “At the Edge of the Sun” was not billed as a Latinx art show but rather a themed group exhibition not unlike any other the gallery is known for mounting. A select few of the artists had previously shown with Jeffrey Deitch or another gallery of its caliber, but for many included, this was their first outing at a blue-chip space like this one. In a sense, this show was more than just an exhibition: it was a springboard for future success as well. At least one alum from this show, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., wound up with a Jeffrey Deitch solo exhibition after appearing here.
To create the exhibition, the gallery did not utilize the usual model of assigning a curator or an in-house dealer to form an artist list that spoke to a theme. Instead, the 12 artists worked together to devise the exhibition, viewing the show as a collective endeavor. Together, they ruminated on spaces within LA that they frequented together—the New Jalisco Bar, a gay night club in Downtown Los Angeles, for example—and found creative means of paying homage to them, resisting stereotypes about the city in the process.
This artist-first approach resisted attempts to define a singular aesthetic, with many mediums and thematic concerns represented. Large-scale mixed-media installations by the likes of Guadalupe Rosales, Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., and Mario Ayala comingled with paintings by rafa esparza, Jamie Muñoz, Michael Alvarez, and Ozzie Juarez. Elsewhere, there were intimately scaled sculptures by Karla Ekaterine Canseco, Diana Yesenia Alvarado, Gabriela Ruiz, and Maria Maea. And in a meta gesture, Shizu Saldamando showed portraits of all the artists included. Made over the past several years, Saldamando’s paintings acted as a visual record of the sense of community found during the show’s making.
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Honorable Mention: “Means of Production,” Organized by Lunch Hour Collective (Do Tuong Linh, Lily Jue Sheng, Serena Chang)
Rather than being staged in a commercial gallery in Chelsea or Tribeca, “Means of Production” was located in a factory in Flushing, Queens, that houses the companies Sheerly Touch-Ya and Shisanwu. The exhibition was related intimately to the building’s history. Sheerly Touch-Ya was founded by the Taiwanese immigrant James Chang, and Shisanwu was started by his daughter Serena, who had previously worked in Urs Fischer’s studio. Viewing that family lineage as one that braided together art and fashion, the curatorial collective Lunch Hour (whose ranks include Serena) exhibited work by 75 New York–based artists in this building. The offbeat setting and the unusual curatorial style, with sculptures assorted around piled boxes of hosiery, acted as a creative means of showing the work of young artists during a time when many New York galleries are closing. Shows like these in unconventional spaces with off-kilter spirits serve as a way to push conversations around contemporary art practice and experimentation forward.
