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Stations by Vincent Valdez
Latino Arts Inc. Gallery
United Community Center
1028 S. 9th Street
www.latinoartsinc.org
April 27 - August 31.
When an artist’s chosen media falls into sync with
his or her chosen subject the viewer learns
something about both. Surprisingly, this type of
synchronicity between media and meaning doesn’t
happen often.
But Vincent Valdez has found his muse in charcoal.
Through this primitive drawing tool, Valdez renders
a “stations of the cross” style drama featuring a
pugilist as protagonist. His work is on view at the
United Community Center Gallery 1028 S. 9th
Street, through August 31.
Valdez capitalizes on the elemental, earthy nature
of charcoal as he renders the punch and turns his
boxers into life-sized sacrificial lambs. The scraping
tonalities of the media, the velvety blacks that can
be gracefully pulled into nuanced tones and the
directness of the hand in mark making seem like
apt parallels for the action of the boxing ring where
black and white, conscious or unconscious,
spotlights, the night, the surreal screaming crowd
and even the splattering of sweat or blood share a
brute, primitive aesthetic.
Like the “Ashcan” school of American painting,
Valdez seeks to capture the dualism of his subject,
both the immense cruelty of boxing and the ritually
honorable side of the sport as two men face each
other with only their fists. The strength of Valdez’s
work is that he focuses on the pain but doesn’t
deny the beauty and excitement of boxing. He
seems to be suggesting that as each young man
dreams of success in the ring and subjects himself
to physical torture, there is a parallel with Christ
who put himself in a position that required
suffering for his beliefs. Both the boxer and Christ
base their lives on a faith that certainly transcends
logic. One can imagine that prayer and religious
intervention might be as regularly called into play in
the ring as in Judea.
Valdez, a San Antonio native, is a 2000 graduate of
the Rhode Island School of Design. This selection
of life-sized or larger drawings was completed
between 2002 and 2004 and has traveled to a
number of venues. Apparently, San Antonio is the
nation’s capital of Latino boxing. Everyone who’s
anyone goes there to train, and Valdez’s brother
was a professional boxer. Valdez grew up in the
Southside neighborhood where all of this took
place.
The show features thirteen drawings that chronicle
one night in the life of a boxer. The imagery moves
from the vertical to the horizontal, from a hopeful
beginning to a tragic end. Some of Valdez’s
compositions feature only the boxer as a solitary
icon of potential triumph and others offer crowded
scenes with skewed perspectives that suggest the
moment-to-moment intensity and surrealism of a
boxing match.
What ultimately seems most interesting in this
work, beyond the narrative, is simply Valdez’s
finesse in how he renders the figures. He learned
to draw at RISD, not something all art school
graduates can claim. There’s a pleasure in simply
sharing Valdez’s exploration of “chiaroscuro” or the
endless play of shadow and light as he pulls his
images from the darkness of obscurity with all the
hope that every young boxer must carry to the ring.
- Debra Brehmer
Debra Brehmer is co-publisher of Susceptible to
Images.
Email dbrehmer@susceptibletoimages.com
Copyright 2007. Content may not be used or
reproduced without the permission of the author.
Latino Arts Inc. Gallery
United Community Center
1028 S. 9th Street
www.latinoartsinc.org
April 27 - August 31.
When an artist’s chosen media falls into sync with
his or her chosen subject the viewer learns
something about both. Surprisingly, this type of
synchronicity between media and meaning doesn’t
happen often.
But Vincent Valdez has found his muse in charcoal.
Through this primitive drawing tool, Valdez renders
a “stations of the cross” style drama featuring a
pugilist as protagonist. His work is on view at the
United Community Center Gallery 1028 S. 9th
Street, through August 31.
Valdez capitalizes on the elemental, earthy nature
of charcoal as he renders the punch and turns his
boxers into life-sized sacrificial lambs. The scraping
tonalities of the media, the velvety blacks that can
be gracefully pulled into nuanced tones and the
directness of the hand in mark making seem like
apt parallels for the action of the boxing ring where
black and white, conscious or unconscious,
spotlights, the night, the surreal screaming crowd
and even the splattering of sweat or blood share a
brute, primitive aesthetic.
Like the “Ashcan” school of American painting,
Valdez seeks to capture the dualism of his subject,
both the immense cruelty of boxing and the ritually
honorable side of the sport as two men face each
other with only their fists. The strength of Valdez’s
work is that he focuses on the pain but doesn’t
deny the beauty and excitement of boxing. He
seems to be suggesting that as each young man
dreams of success in the ring and subjects himself
to physical torture, there is a parallel with Christ
who put himself in a position that required
suffering for his beliefs. Both the boxer and Christ
base their lives on a faith that certainly transcends
logic. One can imagine that prayer and religious
intervention might be as regularly called into play in
the ring as in Judea.
Valdez, a San Antonio native, is a 2000 graduate of
the Rhode Island School of Design. This selection
of life-sized or larger drawings was completed
between 2002 and 2004 and has traveled to a
number of venues. Apparently, San Antonio is the
nation’s capital of Latino boxing. Everyone who’s
anyone goes there to train, and Valdez’s brother
was a professional boxer. Valdez grew up in the
Southside neighborhood where all of this took
place.
The show features thirteen drawings that chronicle
one night in the life of a boxer. The imagery moves
from the vertical to the horizontal, from a hopeful
beginning to a tragic end. Some of Valdez’s
compositions feature only the boxer as a solitary
icon of potential triumph and others offer crowded
scenes with skewed perspectives that suggest the
moment-to-moment intensity and surrealism of a
boxing match.
What ultimately seems most interesting in this
work, beyond the narrative, is simply Valdez’s
finesse in how he renders the figures. He learned
to draw at RISD, not something all art school
graduates can claim. There’s a pleasure in simply
sharing Valdez’s exploration of “chiaroscuro” or the
endless play of shadow and light as he pulls his
images from the darkness of obscurity with all the
hope that every young boxer must carry to the ring.
- Debra Brehmer
Debra Brehmer is co-publisher of Susceptible to
Images.
Email dbrehmer@susceptibletoimages.com
Copyright 2007. Content may not be used or
reproduced without the permission of the author.
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| Charcoal drawing by Vincent Valdez. Courtesy Latino Arts Inc. Gallery. |
| Charcoal drawings by Vincent Valdez. Courtesy Latino Arts Inc. Gallery. (click images to enlarge, use your browser's 'back' button to return to article.) |
| Vincent Valdez, He Then Fell Once More, charcoal drawing. Courtesy Latino Arts Inc. Gallery. |
