June 30 - July 31, 2022
From Flight Gallery:
“Statement:
José Villalobos is known for artistically protesting culturally-accepted traits of toxic masculinity through performance, installation, sculpture, drawings, and fashion. Villalobos grew up on the US/Mexico border in El Paso, TX, and was raised in a traditional conservative family. His work reconciles the identity challenges in his life, caught in between traditional Mexican customs and American mores, as well as growing up with religious ideals that conflict with being gay. In his work, he confronts the derogatory terms and attitudes with which Villalobos continues to withstand today. The root of Villalobos’s work lies in the performativity of his identity. His accoutrements are proud connections to his heritage but are also reminders of the hate and homophobia that he has had to endure. Villalobos manipulates material through the context of self-identity as he examines gender roles within family culture . He demonstrates that dismantling traditional modes of masculine identity center an interstitial space where materiality softens the virility. In his work Villalobos protests the toxicity of machismo though the use of objects, specifically within the norteño culture, that carry a history by deconstructing and altering them. Although new forms are created he demonstrates the battle between the acceptance being a maricón and assimilating to the cultural expectations.
Bio:
Jose Villalobos grew up on the US/Mexico border in El Paso, TX, and was raised in a traditional conservative family. His work reconciles the identity challenges in his life, caught in between traditional Mexican customs and American mores, as well as growing up with religious ideals that contrast with being gay. In his artistic practice, Villalobos explores traditionally “masculine” objects and softens the virility of these objects. Villalobos received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2016. He was awarded the Artist Lab Fellowship Grant that same year for his work De La Misma Piel at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. Villalobos recently earned a Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptures grant and residency and is also a recipient of the Tanne Foundation Award. His work was featured in the nationally recognized exhibition, Trans America/n: Gender, Identity, Appearance Today at the McNay Art Museum. Villalobos has exhibited and performed at the Mexic-Arte Museum, Austin, TX; El Paso Museum of Art, TX; El Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; among other institutions and galleries nationwide.”
Reception: July 1, 2022 | 6–10 pm
112R Blue Star
San Antonio, 78204 TX
210.872.2586
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