Diana Yesenia, Mario Ayala, Sayre Gómez, Alfonso González JR: (Dirty Realism: Otra Noche en L.A.)

It is a pleasure to present Dirty Realism: Another Night in L.A., a set of twelve exhibitions by artists from Los Angeles and the surrounding area. This exhibition is part of a survey that began with the exhibition Los AngelitXs, curated by Fer Francés in 2021. A study of a new movement that emerged in the United States, made up of artists of Hispanic-American origins born in Los Angeles, which has achieved great visibility in recent years, given that it is presented as a critique of society and the institutions that shape it.

 

In the summer edition of Granta magazine in 1983, Bill Bufford made reference to a term to refer to the literary work of a number of American writers, such as Charles Bukowski or Raymond Carver, who spoke about issues already forgotten by the literary elites of the time.

 

"they talk about the undercurrents of contemporary life ( dirty realism)-an absentee husband, a single mother, a car thief, a pickpocket, drug addicts-but they write about it with an unsettling detachment, sometimes bordering on food."

-Bill Bufford

 

And it is this same term that is now used to talk about a generation that, while coming from a different background, perceives a similar reality of the city in which they both lived, and of which they continue to share the same struggles, concerns and landscapes to portray.

 

The purpose of this exhibition is to show how the social background, the place where you are born or the culture to which you belong, influences the artistic language, modifies it and provides a means of communication between those whose experiences, both generational and social, have been similar, giving rise to a space in which to dialogue about a reality that is perceived from different points of view.