Harper’s is pleased to present The Neighborhood, Salomón Huerta’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in East Hampton. In a new series of portraits, Huerta reflects upon the community that shaped his upbringing while simultaneously revisiting and challenging the genre of painting that first brought him acclaim. In a departure from his early work which exuded a sense of anonymity, Huerta now offers an intimate vision of the individuals who shaped his life, depicting them with nuance and sensitivity in a simple and direct style that challenges the social and formal qualities of portraiture. The exhibition opens Saturday, May 27, 5–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
In The Neighborhood, Huerta combines two contrasting approaches towards this series of autobiographical paintings. In the first, the most tangible, he works from a collection of photographs taken by his brother of friends and family in Boyle Heights in the early 1990s. In the second, the more abstract, he works entirely from memory: blending his recollections of his friends with the found images from advertising or the layouts of magazine campaigns. Executed with quick brushstrokes and a limited palette, Huerta’s focus remains on his figures. His backdrops are largely indistinct or faint, and this is perhaps representative of the two avenues he takes towards his subjects—faded pictures or fading memories. In each of these works his deft brushwork captures the sense of a person, their individuality, their spirit, portraying it as that which will always remain, though the setting may change.
The use of photography and the reliance on his memory offers Huerta a controlled means to approach his subjects and his own personal history, contemplating and confronting an upbringing that was set against a backdrop of gang violence and crime. His hesitancy to address these topics earlier in his artistic career stemmed from a fear that his practice would therefore be dismissed or “ghettoized.” Now, using a direct and frontal depiction of his subjects’ identities, Huerta makes a stark change from his previous series of portraits where he would only paint the back of a sitter’s head with the only distinguishable figures being the tonal variations of skin tone or the subtle differences in hairstyle.
While many of the source images were taken at funerals, Huerta chooses a work like Grumpy and Happy or Couple in the Park, as an opportunity to recast his personal history: removing the headstones so that the cemetery settings become that of a park. These subtle shifts, otherwise invisible, offer Huerta a chance to invite his audience to consider the character, the nuance, and the humanity of his subjects, which he does with a gentle and yet blunt brutality, a quality he credits finding in the portraits of Eduoard Manet. Huerta writes, “I don’t approve of the violence gangs create, but they are still a subculture of our society that cannot be ignored. I’m just reflecting on my youth and picking out the best moments which were very few.”
Salomón Huerta (b. 1965, Tijuana, Mexico) received a BFA from Art Center College of Design in 1991, and an MFA from UCLA in 1998. Most recently, his work has been the subject of solo presentations at Harper’s, New York (2022); Louise Alexander Gallery, Porto Cervo, IT (2021 and 2019); California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA (2020); Gallery Vacancy/ltd los angeles, Shanghai (2019); Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2018); There There Gallery, Los Angeles (2018); and Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2014). Over the course of his career, Huerta was included in notable group presentations including Home—So Different, So Appealing, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2017); Transactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2006); Retratos, El Museo del Barrio, New York, San Antonio Museum, San Antonio, and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC (2005-6); Lateral Thinking: Art of the 1990s, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2002); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2000); and LA Current, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (1999 and 1997). His work has been acquired by numerous institutions including Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, and Los Angeles Times, among other publications. Huerta lives and works in Los Angeles.