September 11 – November 9, 2010

The Spanish phrase adelante siempre translates as “always forward” and implies the conviction to continually move ahead in life despite obstacles or setbacks. This exhibition uses the expression to consider the recent work of regional artists Laura Aguilar, Diane Arellano, and Jacalyn López García who locate photographic production and processes at the center of their aesthetic endeavors. The work reveals their artistic and theoretical concerns as they move ahead into new photographic techniques and processes as part of their current art practice. 

Laura Aguilar takes the human figure as her primary mode of visual exploration and questions the contemporary social construct that defines beauty as a particular size, phenotype, and sexuality. The isolated landscapes of Joshua Tree National Park and the Texas border regions appear to merge with representations of the artist’s body blurring the boundaries of the human form with those of nature.

Diane Arellano chronicles a range of environments including the formal investigation of urban public places and performative social spaces of country line dancing. The artist visually juxtaposes public structures against each other to record the differences among new and old inhabitants of Los Angeles, and documents the celebration of country line dancing in gay-identified social spaces.

Jacalyn López García uses the Internet as a framework to interrogate a suburban bicultural identity and to question the role of social networking sites in our society. López García’s alter ego and fictional Internet identity “Goldie García” traverses cyberspace in pursuit of the Fourth Wiseman, aka El Cuarto Mago, who can grant Goldie’s wish to own her ideal home, a farm.

Aguilar is a self-trained artist whose work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. Arellano received her B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts and her work has been exhibited in Canada and multiple venues in the United States. López García received her B.A. from the University of California, Riverside and her M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University. Her work has been exhibited in Mexico, Canada, and Germany, as well as throughout the United States.