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3/2/2006

Ernesto Romo

Tropico de Nopal Gallery - Art Space, Los Angeles

Many-media installation, papier-mache, rasquache furniture and architecture

Tropico de Nopal Gallery-Art Space presents Echoing Chingazos in the Echo Chamber, a many-media installation by up-and-coming artist Arturo Ernesto Romo.

In this, his first solo exhibition, Romo will present a complex body of work. The installation includes large wall drawings, rasquache furniture and architecture, papier mache monsters and plaster cats with baseball hats, books on the magical plant life in Los Angeles, and murals on the wall marking the non-linear history of mufflers, crystals, mushrooms, dandelions.

In large part a response to closed-off systems that encourage conformity and isolation, Romo's work delves into their flip side, exploring abundance and diversity, humor, illogical or impossible situations, multiple levels of puns, and echoing, almost conspiratorial interrelationships. In the work, one will recognize traces and blobs of the work of Oscar Zeta Acosta, The Dadas and John Trudell.

Arturo Romo has created an alter ego that has become an integral part of his creative process challenging the viewer at all times to discern between fact and fiction. An example of this is Romo's explanation of his relationship to his alter ego Doctor Eufencio Rojas: I'm a certificated practitioner of the Doctor's unique NarcoQuest Urban Carbolic Fissure method. Its influence can be seen in many of my sculptures and writings.

Dr. Eufencio Rojas was born in Tucson, Arizona in the early seventies. After being kicked out of Flowing Well High School for inciting a riot, a young Eufencio began a journey, on foot to Oaxaca, where, according to him, he "ate a space mushroom under a pine tree in Monte Negro, threw it up in Sinaloa and fell asleep in Los Angeles." Little is known of Rojas' whereabouts until about 1996, when he was injured in a freak twister in El Sereno. As a result of the incident, Rojas' dedicated himself to bringing his knowledge of urban mysticism to the masses. His lecture series, NarcoQuest, now in its 8th year, tours around the southwest, educating a new generation of iconoclasts, visionaries and curandera/os. Rojas is also the figurehead of Rojas Press, a press dedicated to making available the Doctor's teachings in written form.

Romo is a native of Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Salt Lake City and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. He has a degree in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland. An evening “Conversation with the Artist" is scheduled for Thursday, Feb 23, 7:30pm.

In conjunction with the exhibition, writer Sesshu Foster will read from his latest novel Atomik Aztex, published by City Lights, and chosen by the Village Voice as a “top shelf 2005" favorite, with Amy Uyematsu on Saturday, Feb 18, 8 pm.

Additional related events:
Book Reading: Saturday - February 18, 8 pm
Atomik Aztex by Sesshu Foster

Conversation with Arturo Romo: Thursday February 23, 7:30pm

Reception: Saturday, February 4, 7-10 pm

Tropico de Nopal Gallery - Art Space
1665 Beverly Blvd. (Echo Park) - Los Angeles CA 90026
Gallery hours: Tues - Fri: 12 noon - 4 pm; Sat: 1- 5pm or by appointment

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