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Summary: Rubén Ortiz Torres is a documentary photographer and filmmaker who harbors no illusions about the role subjectivity plays in his art Shot in the streets of Tijuana Santa Barbara Mexico City and East Los Angeles among other locations his ongoing series of maniacally beautiful pictures treats urban centers and out of the way places as equally suitable stages for carnivalesque celebration Giddy dizzying and risky Ortiz s Fujiflex Super Glossy prints and low budget films do not depict specific geographic locations so much as they give physical form to participatory events in which the usual rules no longer hold Both phantasmagorical and realistic his works transform the goal of multiculturalism into a point of departure at once attractive and accessible A pair of color saturated photographs embodies the polymorphous nature of Ortiz s ambitiously idiosyncratic art To make the first of these he traveled to the tiny town of Campeche Mexico where he stayed for three days and produced a single image of the mock Statue of Liberty that stands atop an oversize pedestal in the town square For the second he visited South of the Border a tacky roadside diner that doubles as a souvenir shop motel and theme park just south of the border between North and South Carolina Side by side the two prints demonstrate that despite the lopsidedness of American exports and imports cultural exchange is a two way street Born in Mexico City educated at Cal Arts and currently residing in Los Angeles Ortiz insists that we live in a topsy turvy world and that art works best when it adds to this craziness

Image Dimensions: 548 x 582