Antonio Pelayo:
Mi Familia and other pencil drawings on paper
February 25th – March 17th, 2012
Opening Reception:
Saturday, February 25th, 6 – 10pm
Musical Selections Curated by The Get Down Collective
and with Neon Sculpture GOODS & GOODS & GOODS
by David O. Johnson
5900 Wilshire Blvd., East Annex (Variety Bldg.)
Los Angeles, CA 90036
LAUNCH LA is proud to present Antonio Pelayo’s first solo exhibition of his professional fine art career. A gifted draftsman of the highest regard, Antonio has been honing his craft his entire life. He recorded his earliest memories and observations, always keeping himself occupied with pencil and sketchbook in hand.
This exhibition includes work from three different series. Icons pays homage to heroes and villains that have shaped Antonio’s consciousness from an early age. The La Lucha series takes us deeper into thoughts and dreams of a young man searching for his identity. Finally in Mi Familia, his most recent drawings display a fondness for his past while coming to terms with the people and cultures that shaped him.
Antonio began working for Disney Studios immediately following his high school graduation as an inker and painter. His responsibilities currently include his position as the head of the Special Effects Department. Antonio was born in Glendale, CA and raised in El Palmar, Jalisco. He now resides in Glendale.
Please join us for the opening reception of this solo show on Saturday, February 25th, 6 – 10 pm. The LAUNCH Gallery is located at 5900 Wilshire Boulevard (Variety Building) in the east annex, across the street from LACMA in Los Angeles, 90036. For more information, please call 323-899-1363 or visit www.launchla.org
The Artist
Antonio Pelayo -
Mi Familia
My parents first came to the United States as illegal aliens from Mexico in the 60′s. I was born in Glendale, but raised in a small Mexican village. A childhood broken into two countries has been a major subject matter in my art. It’s as though my paintings are still looking for that one home.
I used old family photos as the subjects of these drawings. I intentionally left out the backgrounds, concentrating solely on the figures. If I did the backgrounds, the drawings would be complete, and closed. The story would be done. This way, with the subject all alone and without a sense of place, the drawings asks; “Who am I? Where do I belong?”
Icons
The road is the most familiar place to me. I can step off it a moment, and rest, and draw. People keep passing by. Most of them have homes to get to. This is my home, on the side of the road. I’m comfortable here, have been since I was nine. I rest in the lines that my pencil makes on the page, in the lines of an old man who stops and lets me draw him, or the circular cheek of a fat baby in a father’s arm. I’m looking for something in each line of their faces: their story. Their lives, their past, get etched into their very skin. And I try to capture that story, that moment. Perhaps I’ll find a home there.
La Lucha
El Luchador, the warrior, fights inside and out side. He is in the ring. He is inside us. That’s why we love him, that’s why we cheer for his victories and boo when the enemy throws him to the matt. He wears a mask. (Don’t we all?) And yet we know who he is. He is us, inside every single one of us, hurling himself into the dark place inside us all. His blows in the ring mirror. The blows we feel in our hearts, the kicks and the shock of the daily war. We worry for him. We scream at him. We raise our fists in triumph with him, as though we had been in the ring, as though somehow, he had pulled apart the ropes and called us in.
To see more works by Antonio, visit: www.antoniopelayo.com
That sense of disconnection is a feeling the self-taught artist is all too familiar with. At the age of nine, his family suddenly moved to their rural village in El Palmar, Jalisco, Mexico. Since Antonio was not fluent in Spanish at that time and the life he once lived was hundreds of miles away, he felt alienated from the city life he was used to living in his Glendale, California home.
