AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BROWN BUFFALO II

BY JOSÉ GUADALUPE GARZA

July 9 — Aug. 28, 2021
High Low*

*Gallery visits by appointment only with COVID-19 mitigation policies in place. For questions or concerns, please contact [email protected]

This exhibition takes its title from the novel by activist and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta. The book is his own fictionalized account of coming of age as a Chicano in the sixties as he searches for his personal and cultural identity. Fifty years later, this “sequel” reexamines politics, race, mass media, and capitalism through cinematic histories and popular culture and how they relate to the Latinx experiences in the present-day United States. Composed of photographs and video, the images reflect current conditions through Hollywood blockbusters, Chicano cinema, lucha libre, lowrider car culture, the Florentine Codex, and rock music.

José Guadalupe Garza was born along the US/Mexico border. He is an artist, educator, and veteran working in new and traditional media. His studio practice utilizes cinema and popular culture as theoretical frameworks to explore the changing demographic and cultural landscape of the U.S. with significance to the Latinx experience. Garza borrows from films, music, literary works, and the science fiction genre to create reimagined narratives. His projects take on various forms such as ad hoc libraries, curated screenings and exhibitions, improvisations and reenactments, experimental lectures and presentations, workshops, drawing, photography, sculpture, and video.

Garza has exhibited nationally and internationally including the 2017 Biennale de Spazio Pubblico in Rome (2017), From the Archives, Video Art in America at Everson Museum (2019), Border Control at University of Michigan Stamps Gallery (2019), and the Counterpublic Triennial (2019). He earned a BFA in Drawing from the University of Florida and an MFA in Visual Arts from Washington University in St. Louis.