Photo courtesy of Art League Houston
Vincent Valdes Siete Diaz/Seven Days is a 2022 series consisting of seven silkscreen panels depicting people who have disappeared in Central and South America, as well as a series of panels spelling out the days of the week in Spanish.
San Antonio-born artist Vincent Valdez tackles weighty themes in his powerful drawings, paintings and prints: lynching victims, the forcibly disappeared and hooded monsters who are members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Ten years ago, Valdes took over Art Pace’s Hudson showroom. The strangest fruit — a striking, large-scale exhibition of paintings that explores the often-forgotten history of Mexican and Mexican-American lynchings in Texas from the 1800s to the 1930s. The series takes its title from Abel Meeropol’s protest poem “Strange Fruit,” which was set to music by Billie Holiday in 1939 and quickly became the theme song for the anti-lynching movement.
Now based in Los Angeles, Valdez returns to Art Pace with a hybrid exhibition that furthers one of his primary artistic missions: to evoke public memory and counter distorted realities. The exhibition’s opening reception will be held this Thursday, and the works will be on display until December 1st.
Valdes’s, curated by Zaira Costiniano of the Art League of Houston Undercurrent Anchor Siete Diaz/Seven Daysis a 2022 series of silkscreen panels, 14 of which depict disappeared people in Latin America and seven which spell out the days of the week in Spanish. Printed on translucent fabric and hung from the ceiling, the images suggest souls being erased or faded from existence.
“The series is a meditation on the violence that has historically been unleashed as a direct result of the U.S. government’s foreign policy and military intervention aimed at disrupting and quashing social and political opposition to U.S. imperialism in Latin America,” Valdés said at the project’s 2022 debut.
With a dreaded election looming, Valdes’ lithograph series is incredibly timely. Since 1977 US presidents dating back to the artist’s birth year appear to slide off the edge of the paper (all we can see of the 45-year-old president are his unkempt eyebrows and nauseating hairdo).
Providing additional context, Undercurrent It also includes some works by artists who have inspired Valdés, including a number of Art Pace graduates. Of particular interest is the work of Valdés’ partner, Adriana Corral. latitudea series of blind debossed etchings based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and large-format works by his mentor Rubio. January 6th Selfie.
Admission is free, opening reception is 6-9 p.m. Thursday, July 11, exhibit is 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday through Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, through Dec. 1, Artpace, 445 N. Main Ave., (210) 212-4900, artpace.org.
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