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Borderless: The Art of Luis Tapia

By Spanish Colonial Arts Society
On Sunday January 27th, 2pm at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Luis Tapia will be presenting on his work and signing his new publication.
Luis Tapia is a pioneering Chicano artist who for forty-five years has pushed the art of polychrome wood sculpture to new levels of craftsmanship and social and political commentary. Tapia’s extraordinary figurative works speak to the complexity of a multilayered Latino/Hispano/Chicano identity, history, and contemporary culture, offering compelling insights and challenging perspectives on life in the barrio, on the border, and beyond.
Rooted in a folk art tradition established in seventeenth-century New Mexico, Tapia’s work at once honors its origins, reinterprets traditional subject matter, and revitalizes age-old techniques. Setting his subjects in innovative spatial and conceptual environments, Tapia illuminates the social, political, and religious issues of yesterday and today, and the joy and humor of daily life. His meticulously carved and painted figures flaunt brilliant color and intricate detail, utilizing symbols from history and popular culture with profound, playful, or provocative visual effect.
In 2017 Tapia’s solo show Luis Tapia: Cada Mente es un Mundo opened at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach California and in 2018, Dr. Tey Marianna Nunn curated Luis Tapia: Sculpture as Sanctuary at the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago Illinois. In companion with these exhibits Tapia and Carmella Padilla published Borderless: The Art of Luis Tapia, the book chronicles Tapia’s artistic career and features essays by Lucy R. Lippard, Tey Marianna Nunn, Denise Chávez, and Edward Hayes.

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