Danny Jauregui's first one-person show in New York will include eight large paintings on canvas and six smaller multilayered works on paper that depict allegorical structures evoking forgotten spaces.
In a process that he calls a "queering of architecture," Danny Jauregui examines "invisible histories" through his own experience as a young gay Chicano man living in Los Angeles. He commemorates an aspect of gay culture in Los Angeles before the AIDS crisis in his newest series, There Goes the Neighborhood, by reimagining former bathhouses in Silver Lake (the neighborhood where he currently lives) as abandoned ruins. The paintings are, in the artistʼs words, "memorials to the absence of memorials," indexing the conflicted history of radical gay sexuality.
These newest paintings feature soft-edged geometric grids rendered in monochrome shades of black and gray gouache on textured backgrounds. Jauregui creates the traces and stains of the "ruin," a central theme in his work, by sprinkling coarse salt over a wash of diluted paint which, when dried, is scraped away to reveal an intricate patterned surface. The works on paper are created using a similar combination of salt and gouache. Tiled walls are suggested by grid-like forms that the artist cuts into the thick paper. Composed of three layered sheets that have been attached at the top, the works are distinctly sculptural.
Danny Jauregui was born in Los Angeles in 1979. He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002 and his MFA from the University of California, San Diego in 2006. His first solo museum exhibition, Absent the Center, took place earlier this year at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine. Jauregui was also prominently featured in Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, a group survey that originated at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and recently was on view at El Museo del Barrio in New York. He is a recipient of this yearʼs distinguished California Community Foundation Arts Fellowship for emerging artists.
The gallery is located on the 6th Floor at 535 West 22nd Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.