Hugo Crosthwaite "Tijuacolor"

Event Description

STANIAR GALLERY

Hugo Crosthwaite

"Tijuacolor"

Exhibition: Monday, April 28-Friday, May 30, 2025

Staniar Gallery (Hours: M-F 9am-5pm)

Live mural performance: April 28-May 10, 2025. Free and Open to the public. Please check the Staniar Gallery website for hours.

Lecture and Reception: Monday, May 12, 2025, 5:30-6:30 Wilson Concert Hall and Lykes Atrium

Over two weeks, Hugo Crosthwaite will engage in the spontaneous and improvisational creation of a mural with a visual narrative that explores themes of borders and immigration. Tijuacolor is Crosthwaite's invented compound word fusing "Tijuana" and "color," playing with TV and film technological branding concepts such as "technicolor" or "in full color." The performance mural and corresponding work promise a visually exciting and true-to-life narrative that explores complex issues such as immigration, transculturation, gentrification, and gender violence. Throughout the mural-painting performance, the exhibition spaces will be accessible to the public, allowing visitors to observe firsthand as Crosthwaite embarks on his artistic journey, painting directly onto the gallery walls. Upon the conclusion of the exhibition, in accordance with the artist's instructions, the mural will be painted over, symbolizing the ephemeral nature of border regions.

Born in Tijuana in 1971, Crosthwaite grew up in Rosarito, Baja California, 10 miles south of the international border. A 1997 graduate of San Diego State University with a BA in Applied Arts and Sciences, Crosthwaite works in a linear and improvisational fashion. He combines portraiture, comic book references, urban signage, commercial facades, and mythology in dense, layered compositions. Crosthwaite brings characters from allegory and popular media to the stage of the human condition, interacting with the architecture of Tijuana and dreams of the border. The work reflects the character of frenetic urban settings, a border in flux. Fear, hope, pain, and celebration are represented together as Crosthwaite elevates the ordinary person to heroic levels showing the trials they endure while surviving in contemporary society. Hugo Crosthwaite is represented by Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.

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