Alejandro Diaz

Interview by Miki Garcia

Illusion is the first of all pleasures -Oscar Wilde

Alejandro Diaz’ paintings and sculptures fuse Andy Warhol’s camp aesthetics, Truman Capote’s panache, Oscar Wilde’s irreverence, and Cesar Chavez’ tender hopefulness. Before committing exclusively to his artistic practice, Diaz was a successful curator and entrepreneur. In 1995, he founded Sala Diaz in his living room in downtown San Antonio, which has become an exhibition space with an international reputation for embracing experimental art practices. Diaz, who received his MA in curatorial studies from Bard College in 1999, went on to curate several successful exhibitions in Texas, Mexico, and New York City.

Today, Diaz’ elegantly crafted works are inscribed with personal and political references. What may seem like oblique surfaces or reductive black and white canvases are in fact layered records of his life and life-style. Rooted in a tradition of self-invention—think Duchamp’s Rose Selavy or Oldenburg’s Ray Gun personas—Diaz has produced an oeuvre that negotiates between his middle class Chicano roots and his Ivy League educated transition into the world of high art, fashion, and culture.

For this interview, I asked Diaz about identity and re-invention, artifice and beauty, and humor and despair. Here’s what he had to say:

Miki - What are some of your aesthetic and philosophical inspirations?

Alejandro - My work is a collage of both high and low culture. I reference many styles and genres including: New Yorker-style cartoons; folk art; craft; Madison Avenue finery; Rasquache aesthetics; Modernism; Minimalism; and Pop.

Some of my paintings are direct copies of other works of art, usually made in materials associated with craft. For example, # 69, is a black and white glitter replica of Jackson Pollock’s painting # 32. I’ve always liked copies and reproductions as opposed to one-of-a-kind works of art.
That’s why I’m currently interested in the idea of the souvenir. The souvenir can be infinitely reproduced and it’s something that everyone can have and take away with them. The souvenir is a great leveler of cultural hierarchies.

A perfect example of high art gone populist via the gift shop souvenir is Robert Indiana’s 1964 LOVE painting. It’s one of my favorites. For the past 40 years, the LOVE painting has been reproduced on millions (perhaps billions) of umbrellas, tote bags, paperweights etc.

Is the original painting any better than the tote or the set of collectible dessert plates? I don’t think so. The souvenir enables art to become a part of everyday life. Some may say that it’s kitsch to put Monet’s Waterlillies on an umbrella, but what’s kitsch to some is real to others.

Miki - How does San Antonio or Texas inform your work, if at all?

Alejandro - My experience growing up in San Antonio, Texas has provided me with a political foundation for my work. I come from a region where 65% of the population is Mexican-American. I was lucky to be raised in a matriarchy of liberated, political Latina women who were part of the Chicano/Chicana Civil Rights Movement. They fought not only for equal political rights but also fought to have their visual culture acknowledged. They taught me that in both life and art the personal is political.Your work has an ornamental quality - a canvas bedecked with glitter - while also containing some serious cultural/political references. Can you explain this juxtaposition?

I just feel that so much contemporary art seems too aloof, austere, and hard on the viewer. I’ve tried making that kind of art before but it wasn’t the real me. I’ve gone back to making work that’s much closer to who I am— a South Texas decorator and embellisher trapped in the body of a conceptual artist.

While I’ve kept the conceptual, I’ve let the decorative aspects of my work come out. It was the most avant thing I could do. Since I often deal with issues of class and the complexities of hybridity (Mexican-American), I felt a light and decorative look would foil some of the more difficult ideas—to juxtapose the rich with the poor, the elegant with the rasquache, and the hilarious with the painfully sad. Not all my work is pretty however, some of it’s pretty pathetic looking.

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