Edward Goldman, “A Vortex of Images: Mysterious, Challenging and Very Noisy.”
ART TALK, KCRW radio, 6 Nov. 2012.
Excerpt:
…Next, we stopped at the Luis de Jesus Gallery to meet with L.A. artist Ken Gonzales-Day and see his new exhibition of photographs, including the well-known image of two male faces seen in profile. These are bronze portraits from the Getty’s collection, one depicting a white male and the other a black man, staring at one another across a wide divide. Looking at Gonzales-Day’s photographs, your first impression is of the elegant beauty of the museum objects he has chosen as his subjects. But the cool surfaces of these photos are always impregnated with palpable racial, ethnic and cultural tensions.
One of the images in this exhibition is of a gigantic, old tree shot at night. The artist found a horrifying archival photo of a tree with the bodies of young Hispanic men hanging from its branches. Subsequently, Gonzales-Day was able to find and photograph this very tree. The resulting large photo is installed in the gallery across from several portraits of young Latinos, chosen by the artist for their similarity in age to the lynching victims.
To listen to Listen to the episode: Art Talk