John Valadez, Chaos, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.
A trailblazer of the early Chicano Arts Movement in the 1970s and 80s, John Valadez’s work has come to define an iconography of Chicano experience in the city by catalyzing its changing dynamics and reconstructing a mythical allegory that speaks to an alternate vision. Through a multidisciplinary practice spanning 45 years, and encompassing documentary photography and portraiture, public murals, paintings, and pastel works, Valadez has cultivated a style that transcends genre designations. Never settling into one box, his work evokes a fluidity between multiple cultures and visual lexicons, effectively mirroring the unsettled experience of the Chicano identity. Valadez continues to pursue politically engaged work—a persistent voice championing generations of Chicano and Latinx communities.
John Valadez: Chaos Anime presents new paintings that address the shifting global dynamics and social climates facing new generations of Chicanos today, alongside recent works that revisit earlier themes. Together, the works exhibit the breadth of the artist’s social commentaries and further contextualize his lauded approach to painting. Drawing from current events, cultural histories, city life, and such experiences filtered through lucid dreaming, Valadez implements realism, mannerism, abstraction, and montage as a vehicle for allegory and satire to ignite a myriad of socio-political conversations. Themes of invisible borders, sublime skies, tempestuous seas, and juxtapositions between reality, dreams, and the natural world versus the consequences of human interferences, are but some of the constants throughout the trove of Valadez’s urban proverbs. A pivotal moment in Valadez’s new body of work is his extension of Chicano Movement principles, speaking to global matters of displacement, gentrification, economic disparities, famine, the environment, and geopolitics.
Chaos Anime is on view through June 8 @ Luis de Jesus Los Angeles, 1110 Mateo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021
John Valadez, Piernas Anime, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.