“Emojis, Lies, Instagram Muses, and Headline News" by Pedro Vélez at Latino Arts is a subtle protest exhibition. On the walls, seven installations of colorful but tattered and ragged canvases of irregular sizes are placed in a way that seems somber and dignified in the hushed gallery. Alongside the paintings, there are no titles, only numbers that connect them to the exhibition checklist of works. It is this printed text, however, that give the most concrete evidence as to what the paintings, in their restrained but defiant nature, are all about.
The first work in the exhibition is All Nationalisms are Fascisms , a collaborative work with Walter Fernández. Using drop cloth for their canvas, acrylic paint, Sharpie marker and collaged elements are formed like an improvised, expressive cloud of dread. A skeleton in a suit is the focal point, with the skull turned in strong profile to a statement in Spanish, loosely translated “It grows the hatred." The collaged part, like a raised ridge, is important to the topography. Pieces of newspaper text and books are ripped and glued, and under heavily laid acrylic paint it is all compressed together, largely illegible. The unseen, unknown nature of this material looms ominously like sentiments hidden from view.
Vélez describes the nature of this recent work as “visual essays," and a response to the emotional turmoil of the 2016 election. Based in Puerto Rico, he is also an arts writer, and uses social media to further explore the concepts of his work. This exhibition is augmented by his Twitter feed on related themes at twitter.com/PDRVelez.
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As protest art, this body of work does not find the need to scream loudly, but is like a controlled whisper of rage. This may come as something of a disconcerting approach, as so often we think of images of dissent as being far more brash. The distressed nature of these paintings and their surfaces carries a personal catharsis. But, they offer a release of anger and anxiety from the self that, as these are public works now, seeps into the larger arena of dialogue.
Through Oct. 13 at Latino Arts, 1028 S. Ninth St.
