W&L’s Staniar Gallery Presents ‘Distorted Myths’ The show will be on view from Oct. 10–Nov. 2.

By W&L News Office
October 7, 2022

Washington and Lee’s Staniar Gallery is pleased to present “Distorted Myths,” a solo exhibition of works by Los Angeles-based artist Esteban Ramón Pérez. The show will be on view from Oct. 10–Nov. 2. The artist will participate in a public conversation with curator Marcela Guerrero on Tuesday, Oct. 25 at 5 p.m. in Wilson Hall’s Concert Hall, with a reception to follow.

In his interdisciplinary works, Pérez often incorporates materials such as leather and embroidery, paying homage to his experience growing up in his father’s upholstery shop. Drawing on his West Coast Chicanx experience, his practice can be seen as an expression of rasquache aesthetics, an approach to artmaking based on a theory developed by Tomas Ybarra- Frausto to describe “an underdog perspective, a view from los de abajo [from below].” Pérez describes his work as “an interrogation and excavation of my subjective memory, spirituality, fragmented history and social political reality.”

Pérez earned his bachelor’s degree in art from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia in 2017, and his master’s degree in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in 2019. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at Lehmann Maupin, Charles Moffett, Calderón and James Cohan in New York; the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and the Mistake Room in Los Angeles; the Art Gallery, Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Connecticut. In 2020, Pérez was selected for the prestigious NXTHVN Fellowship Program in New Haven, and he is a 2022 recipient of the Angeles Art Fund Artadia Award.

Marcela Guerrero is the Jennifer Rubio Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. This fall, the Whitney presents two projects curated by Guerrero, “un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria,” and “Martine Gutierrez: Supremacy.” From 2014 to 2017 she worked as curatorial fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the much-lauded exhibition “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985,” organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as research coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and art journals. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a doctorate in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Staniar Gallery is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, inside Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts. When campus is open to the public, gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  For more information, please call 540-458-8861.