January 23rd – April 1st, 2023
(Closed March 13 – 18 for Spring Break)
Opening Reception: Friday, January 27th from 5:30 to 8:00 PM
Brief Remarks from the Curators beginning at 6:30 PM
Gallery Talk with Benito Huerta and Christina Rees
Thursday, February 9th from 12:30 to 1:30 PM
Life and Death: Luis Jiménez is an exhibition of 35 works by the late, internationally known artist Luis Jiménez who was born in El Paso, Texas and died in Hondo, New Mexico in 2006. The works range in date from 1973 through 2001, and include sketches, studies, drawings and prints that he created to work through ideas that culminated in his famous large-scale sculptures. The exhibition also includes maquettes, four final concept prints for his famous Progress Suite of which only two were completed as sculptures, and a wall-size drawing/painting of Fiesta Dancers. Life and Death: Luis Jiménez will be on view at The Gallery at UTA in Arlington, TX from January 23 – April 1, 2023.
Guest curators Benito Huerta and Christina Rees have borrowed a wide array of Jiménez’s works from galleries, museums, and private collections throughout the region. Known for his large and colorful fiberglass sculptures, Jiménez also used painting, drawing, and printmaking to address social and political issues and explore the cultures of Mexico and the southwestern United States. After considering hundreds of pieces, Huerta and Rees noted several broad motifs they used as an organizing force and have gathered a robust set of works that encompass Jiménez’s themes including immigration, car culture, “the West,” everyday life, and mortality.
Co-curator Benito Huerta, who first met Luis Jiménez in Houston in 1974 and curated a 30-year retrospective of his work that opened at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1997, says, “Luis was an important Chicano artist whose stature looms large in the art world. His incredible craftsmanship and facility across multiple mediums has produced a body of work that includes exquisite drawings, imaginative printmaking, and seminal fiberglass sculptural works.”
Co-curator Christina Rees says “Jiménez created one of the most compelling bodies of work of his entire generation. His legacy continues to grow. He understood so much of what it means to be fully human with our impulses, egos, flaws… and our potentials. Our hopes and fears. We art types talk a lot about sex and death in art. Very few artists can encompass such grand themes with the humor, aesthetic mastery and wisdom of Jiménez. He’s not only one of the greatest artists to come from this region. He is one of the greatest American artists, period.”
About Luis Jiménez
Luis Jiménez (1940-2006) was born in El Paso, Texas and died in Hondo, New Mexico in 2006. He received a Bachelor of Science, Art, and Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin in 1964. His work has been shown at museums throughout the United States and is part of the permanent collections of the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York National, Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., as well as many others. Selected public commissions can be found in Albuquerque, Cleveland, New York, El Paso, Denver, and Pittsburgh, among other cities.
A concurrent exhibition in the small, enclosed gallery space features Sherrie Levine’s After Russell Lee: 1-60, 2016, and Edouard Duval-Carrié’s Lost at Sea, 2014, for a third chapter in the ongoing “Bridges” series in collaboration with the Art Bridges Foundation. The title “Bridges” is both an homage to Art Bridges, which makes it possible for small partner institutions throughout the country to exhibit museum quality pieces, but also a reference to the metaphoric bridge or conversation created by pairing museum works with works by local artists. For this iteration of the series, Huerta has selected a photograph by Celia Alvarez Muñoz titled Cuando to complement the works by Levine and Duval-Carrié. The installation is minimal to enable focused contemplation of each piece and evoke an abstract dialogue between the artists’ themes and approaches to artmaking.
This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of Art Bridges, the UTA Art & Art History Department, Wm. Campbell Gallery, BB Moncrief & Billy Hassell, and Abe Lopez Ortega.