Undercurrents: Vincent Valdez

From Artpace:

“Artpace is excited to welcome back San Antonio native, Vincent Valdez for the opening of Undercurrents. Undercurrents is a dynamic exhibition that will showcase a varying range of work, including Valdez’s acclaimed series titled, Siete Dias/Seven Days, which was exhibited at the Art League Houston in 2023, where Vincent was awarded Texas Artist of the Year.

Central to Siete Dias are fourteen haunting portraits of disappeared individuals drawn from an archival calendar originally published in 1980s Central America. These ghostly depictions exude a palpable presence, organized in a chapel-like arrangement, with three rows of portraits inviting visitors to contemplate the enigma of their absence.

Seven single-word text panels are interwoven among the evocative images, each representing a day of the week in Spanish. These text panels poignantly symbolize the passage of time, amplifying the ongoing absence and uncertain fates of these missing individuals.

In addition to Siete Dias/Seven Days, Undercurrents examines the dynamics that shape identity through a comprehensive group show. Anchored by the artistic practice of Vincent Valdez, this exhibition expands as pieces by influential artists come into dialogue with Valdez’s work and connect him to individuals, places, and stories. In doing so, Undercurrents simultaneously traces and amplifies the ecology of San Antonio’s prolific Latino and Chicano art scene.

In collaboration with Joe Diaz, a long-time collector and advocate for Latinx and Chicano art (and Valdez’s first collector,) Valdez aims to elevate and acknowledge the artists who inspired his dedication to his craft.

This exhibition, featuring a sizable list of Artpace alums John Hernandez, Adriana Corral, César Martínez, Rubio, and Kathy Vargas, plus Luis Jiménez and others, underscores Artpace’s decades-long relationship with and support of artists and the arts community.

Vincent Valdez blends large, representational paintings—the scale of which recall Western traditions of history painting as well as mural painting and cinema—with contemporary subject matter. He focuses on subjects that explore his observations and experience of life in the twenty-first century. The results are powerful images of American identity that confront injustice and inequity while imbuing his subjects with empathy and humanity. Valdez states, “My aim is to incite public remembrance and to impede distorted realities that I witness, like the social amnesia that surrounds us all.”

A recipient of the Ford and Mellon Foundations Latinx Artist Fellowship (2022), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors (2016), as well as residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting (2005), the Vermont Studio Center (2011), the Kunstlerhaus Bethania Berlin Residency (2014), and the Arion Press’ King Residency (2023), Valdez currently lives and works between Houston and Los Angeles. Exhibitions and Collections include: The Ford Foundation, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MASS MoCA, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and The National Portrait Gallery, among others. He lives and works in Houston and Los Angeles.”