Danie Cansino's "This is My Blood" @ Charlie James Gallery

Images are "Courtesy of the artist and Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo Credit: Yubo Dong/ofstudio."

Danie Cansino’s work is a mix of Baroque realism and Chicanx aesthetics; where one might expect to find historical or biblical heroes, Cansino inserts her own friends and family. Through a commingling of time periods and the conflation of the spiritual with the real, Cansino builds upon a legacy of Mexican painters and the realismo magico that is a part of Mexican spirituality. In her latest solo show This Is My Blood, Cansino takes us into the world of magical realism, wherein she installs her friends and colleagues in a Mechica pantheon, subverting the traditions of Western art.

Text by Leah Perez

This is My Blood is on view through June 17 at Charlie James Gallery, 969 CHUNG KING ROAD

Icons of the Invisible

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As part of the Pacific Standard time art exhibitions in Los Angeles, the Fowler Museum at UCLA presents Icons of the Invisible: Oscar Castillo. Since the late 1960s, Oscar Castillo has documented the Chicano community in Los Angeles, from major political events to cultural practices to the work of muralists and painters. This exhibition will present rarely seen photographs from 1969-1980 exploring major themes (social movement, cultural heritage, urban environment, and everyday barrio life) and approaches (photojournalism, portraiture, art photography) that have guided Castillo’s work. Complementing the concurrent exhibition on Chicano art groups, Mapping Another L.A., the exhibition will provide another level of contextualization of L.A. history during this pivotal period. Icons of the Invisible will be on view from September 25 to February 26, 2012.