Art Lies, Volume 11, June-September 1996 Page: 34
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(7) quoted in Lawrence
Weschler, Mr. Wilson's
Cabinet of Wonder,
Pantheon Books, New
York, 1995, p.40
(8) ibd.
(9) Claude Levi-Strauss, Myth
and Meaning,Schocken
Books, New York, 1979,
back cover
(10) ibd., p 24Cisco Jimenez
HOUSTON
by Bill DavenportC isco Jimenez is not a naive
artist. In his show at Lynn
Goode Gallery he uses an
arsenal of folk inspired styles to
evoke the awkward, ambivalent
relationship between urban and
rural, upper class and lower class,
tradition and innovation in Mexico.
He seems to be drawing source
material from everywhere: pictorial
signage, comics, advertisements,
retablos, and modernism. Many of
the pieces include narrative labels
in colloquial Spanish, the nuances
of which are lost on this reviewer.
Obscenity abounds.
The paintings have a labored,
dirty, handmade quality; canvases
are distressed, crumpled and
chipped.The rudimentarymechanical shading, irregular let-
tering and painfully detailed
objects are a fluent reprise of the
naive painter's bag of tricks. The
geometric backgrounds, use of
varying levels of contrast to bring
images forward or back in space,
and his willingness to mix sculp-
tural and painting elements are all
modern art ploys. In Progreso
Superficial Jimenez criticizes con-
sumerism. Icons of consumer suc-
cess (a mixer, a stove, a couch
and a carton of milk) float in a gar-
ish void, highlighted by twinkling
starbursts. It is a portrait of a mid-
dle class fantasy, enshrined in a
cheap tin picture frame like those
used for religious images.
Jimenez's sculptural work isequally effective, and avoids some
of the cliches of Mexican folk
painting with which the paintings
in this show flirt. In Patas Chuecas
two rough-hewn wooden legs dan-
gle from the wall by leather
thongs. Severed at mid-thigh,
each leg of the mismatched pair is
painfully twisted and disfigured.
Although Jimenez draws on the
folk tradition of carving models of
afflicted body parts as retablos
(The San Antonio Museum has a
few good examples), his sensitive
transformation of the wood's nat-
ural knots, twists and texture into
the ravages of an ulcerous, crip-
pling disease succeeds in tran-
scending the folkiness which traps
many lesser artists.ArtLies 11 - 34- - June - September 1996
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Calledare, Donald. Art Lies, Volume 11, June-September 1996, periodical, June 1996; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228042/m1/34/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .