Sow & Tailor is proud to present Always and Forever, a solo exhibition of Los Angeles-based artist Javier “Javi” Ramirez (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA, USA), on view from June 3 to July 1, 2023.
Javier “Javi” Ramirez was born in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley, using the area’s urban and suburban iconography as a focal point in his work. The San Fernando Valley is a source of pride for the artist; “the colors of my experience differ,” Ramirez says, referring to his counterparts in South and East LA who have come to define what it means to be an Angeleno through their own lens. Although home to nearly two million residents and iconic film studios, the San Fernando Valley is sidelined in Los Angeles’s genealogy. Entrenched in the local community as an art teacher for both children and adults, the artist wants to put his hometown and its histories back on the map. In Always and Forever, the San Fernando Valley has something to say.
Raised by immigrant parents from Mexico, Ramirez’s work is undoubtedly defined by his experience as a first-generation citizen and the common outcomes of such a bifurcated identity, namely how to be an American while being fed the traditions of the motherland. The rose motif is a reference to Día de los Muertos and animals found on blankets purchased in Tijuana are transported to the Valley’s residential streets. Yet Ramirez resists categorizations like “Chicanx” or “Latinx artist,” which have certainly become à la mode in the city’s contemporary art market. Instead, he hopes his story is one all first-generation Americans can relate to. He asks us to consider, “what happens in the liminal space between my parents’ lives and my own?”
The artist’s love of animals is evident in his latest body of work. In Always and Forever, animals are featured prominently in an attempt to explore humans’ relationship to them. In a large-scale painting, a coyote roams a Valley home’s backyard moments before attacking an unsuspecting chicken. A jaguar in another composition is a stand-in for Ramirez’s fierce grandmother. Sculptures of dogs are constructed in a geometric manner, similar to figures found in carved stone idols, likening them to deities or guardians of the underworld. After a recent trip to Mexico, Ramirez began to explore the long, complex history of art and craft from his father’s state of Michoacan and its surrounding areas in Mexico, as well as the objects housed at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.
Perhaps the most intriguing element of Ramirez’s personal and artistic trajectory is his relationship to Japanese culture and its aesthetics, such as wabi sabi, mono no aware, tea ceremonies, ikebana, calligraphy, and classical Japanese films. Ramirez’s interest in Japanese culture led him to work at a bonsai nursery, where the concepts he learned while tending to plants transferred subconsciously into his approach to painting. Similar to the way a tree changes in unintended directions over time, showing evidence of some kind of history or “struggle in its life,” Ramirez’s original ideas evolve during the painting process. In the same manner that deadwood is left in contrast to live sections of a juniper bonsai, the works in Always and Forever show remnants of parts Ramirez has covered, removed, or used as layers in the composition’s evolution – both transparent and boldly opaque. These gestural acrylic layers are pieces of memories or “snapshots” from his personal and familial history.
Text by Tina Barouti
Javier Ramirez (b. 1982, Los Angeles, CA, USA) studied at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design (BFA, 2012). Ramirez has participated in numerous group exhibitions at Sow & Tailor, Los Angeles (2022); The Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles (2022); Franchise, Los Angeles (2022); Gallery Anthony, Chicago (2022); TBN Projects, Los Angeles (2022); Murmurs Cafe, Los Angeles (2021); and the Consulate General of Mexico for Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles (2017). He had his first solo exhibition at Smoke the Moon, Santa Fe (2021) and has been featured in LA Taco.
