Jaime Muñoz’s paintings blend images of Central America and Los Angeles

Jaime Muñoz is a keen cultural observer. The conversation with him veered from art history, the commercialization of contemporary art, and Mesoamerican semiotics to Los Angeles car culture, science fiction, and literature.

All of these references and more permeate Muñoz’s art, which is imbued with an ethic of hard work and the visual appeal of painting and graphic design. With the precision of an architect painting a canvas in Adobe Illustrator, Muñoz uses non-traditional painting techniques such as velvet flocking, airbrushing, vinyl drawing, and the manual labor of hand painting and drafting to create image-filled The pieces are vibrant and often covered with grid-like patterns and appliqués.

His “Toyoteria” series (2018-20), the first work he created after earning his BFA, incorporates his own observations of commuting along Los Angeles’ labyrinthine freeway system, elevating workers’ trucks and tools . exist commuting to los angeles (2019), Muñoz shows the back of one such truck, in a light airbrushed teal color; the vehicle’s logo has been shortened to “YO” and comes with a sticker from the Mexican state of Jalisco showing two ox. Floating above the truck is the symbol of Tonatiu, the Mexica sun god.

The series reflects not only Muñoz’s personal experiences working with his brother on their own vintage Toyota trucks, but also the specific style prized by working-class Latinos in Southern California. “From an artistic perspective, these mini trucks are very beautiful,” he said. “I see them as avatars, placeholders, representing an aspect of an entire population of working-class car culture, as opposed to other car cultures such as lowriders and muscle cars that are very sophisticated and refined.”

Although Muñoz favors images and images that have personal resonance, his work is driven more by intuition than narrative. “I work with technology that I’m very familiar with,” he said. “I often combine industrial processes, using computers to create compositions, vinyl blotting paper and airbrushing, which comes from my graphic design background and manual labor background. It’s a very practical way of working.”

Another series, “Blood Memory” (2019-21), blends Aztec and Catholic imagery to examine colonial history and the legacy of oppression while acknowledging cultural heritage and customs passed down through ancestral DNA. madre (2019), for example, combines the upper half of a sculpture of the Mexica (Aztec) earth goddess Tonanchin with the lower half of an iconic depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, standing on an angel-supported On the cloud. Using a pink pop-art palette with hypnotic depth and symmetry, Muñoz comments on how the Spanish colonization of Mexico incorporated the worship of tonanchin into devotion to the Virgin as they brought the New World to the part of the Christianization effort.

“Jaime was a philosopher and a thinker. Curator Karen Crews Hendon organized Muñoz’s current survey at the Los Angeles Cultural Arts Plaza with impeccable and meticulous The quality shows his admiration for fine craftsmanship.

first generation chicanos Born in Los Angeles and raised in Fontana and Pomona, Munoz originally planned to pursue graphic design as a practical way to satisfy his interest in the visual arts. While in school, Muñoz worked physically demanding jobs, such as structural concrete workers and odd jobs in warehouses, that were unstable and often required long commutes. But the job kept him afloat financially, and he eventually earned an associate’s degree from Chaffee College. “I was a Sunday painter,” he said of that period of his life. But the guiding force has always been an interest in “painting, surface, material.”

His graphic design teacher at Chaffey, artist Mitchell Syrop, encouraged Muñoz to pursue a degree in fine arts instead of finding a job in graphic design. Muñoz received her BA from the UCLA School of Art and Architecture, where she studied with Lari Pittman, Alma López, Jennifer Bolande, and Patty Wickman, among others.

At UCLA, Muñoz began experimenting with enhancing the flat surfaces of traditional painting, adopting more three-dimensional construction methods. “I felt that I could enhance beauty, a discovery that somewhat hid my interest in the work,” he says. “When I was trying to tackle painting composition, this led me to incorporate other materials to create depth to the piece while disrupting its flatness, and to satisfy my interest in elevating craft materials, as craft is another important aesthetic to which I work. aspect.”

But there is a heavy, formal air to Muñoz’s paintings that illustrates his affinity for the Baroque style. “I think a lot about Latin American Baroque painting, especially as I respond to religious themes and revisit certain aspects of colonial history,” he said. “Looking at that piece, I was trying to create my own contemporary version of it.”

Muñoz is part of a group The stardom of Los Angeles Chicanx artists has been rising over the past few years. In early 2024, he participated in the major exhibition “Edge of the Sun” at Jeffrey Deitch’s Los Angeles gallery, which featured Muñoz’s art alongside 11 other artists from his artistic community , which includes Rafa Esparza, Guadalupe Rosales, Mario Ayala and Hizu Saldamando.

“I do feel like we’re in a Harlem Renaissance and there’s a lot of interest in Latino and black art. I don’t know how long that’s going to last, but I do feel optimistic sometimes,” Muñoz said. But he is quick to point out that his work and that of his contemporaries should not be categorized according to their identities, as has happened in the history of contemporary art.

“I see my work as American painting. I try to represent the complexity of the entire country like other artists do,” he says of his practice, which seeks to represent himself and his community by exploring themes of colonialism The often untold narratives of people’s experiences with immigration and the commodification of labor.

With Edge of the Sun, Deitch put the power in the hands of the participating artists, letting them curate their own exhibitions. Of Muñoz’s work, Deitch said art news”, “Jaime is a highly skilled painter who uses both traditional and industrial techniques, making him part of the fine art tradition, but his images also draw heavily from his community in Los Angeles. He also has a lot of priorities in his work. I see similarities in his appropriation of images to artists such as Sigmar Polke and David Salle, as well as to Pop Art in general. “

Artist Rubén Ortiz Torres, who is working on the 2026 Chicanx Art Survey for Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts, said he considers Muñoz one of the most interesting painters working in Los Angeles today. “Jaime’s work is hyper-baroque, his colors are brilliant and seductive, and he is creating conceptual connections between Los Angeles and Latin America,” he said. “By playing with pattern and decoration, he created a contemporary codex that is also a codex for the city.”

One afternoon in September this year, Muñoz pointed at a painting in 2024 at La Plaza truth is a moving target A fusion of personal references: a truck stop named Loves, written in glittering letters across the top of the canvas; the familiar packaging of the popular Mexican laundry soap Zote; butterflies, birds and plants floating in the air, giving this painting a The vibrant imagery adds a touch of magical realism. “I watched a lot of [Henri] Rousseau wanted to create a wild scene,” Muñoz said of the painting that serves as the title of the La Plaza exhibition.

The concept of subjective truth is a key theme in much of Muñoz’s work. He said he was wary of a didactic message or a manifesto, “especially regarding labor conversations.” “I want my audience to remember to feel the art. I want to inspire the audience to look deeply into the work and pull things for themselves and find their own truth, because that’s the beauty of art.”