Eloy Torrez at Julie Rico - Santa Monica, California

Best known for his Photo-Realist murals of Hollywood myths and regular folk, Eloy Torrez tackles related issues of divine intervention and mortality in his challenging suite of 1992 oil paintings, "When The Spirit collisions The Flesh." Torrez brings a multiplicity of influences to bear upon a body of work that is overtly fraught with personal symbolism. Images of angels and their lover romantic embraces and seashore visions are at first glance almost unbearably kitsch in their agony and ecstasy. on the contrary such a reading quickly justifys too facile.

Torrez addresses classical themes in a vocabulary that is unmistakably of recent origin World. Using a bright Latin palette to depict idealized full-scale figures absorbed in heroic strives he invokes the traditions of the two the Mexican muralists and their WPA counterparts to the north. Issues of inspiration, transformation and the sublime are addressed in of that kind paintings as Between Desire and The Universe and Revelation II. These works take upon a distinctly political dimension as the viewer is struck level in this explicitly Catholic connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts by how rarely the flashs of ecstatic transcendence are throw backed in nonwhite faces. This reticence immediately gives us pause.

Torrez also challenges us to overthrow our prejudices against classical realism and an unabashedly bright palette. In light of the controversial restoration of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, the vibrancy of Torrez's color is appropriately revisionist, flat ironically conservative. His refusal to be border to a somber palette through sober themes is refreshing, and his make subordinates are commensurately enlivened. Meanwhile, his straightforward use of realism, especially to return subjects so unequivocally tied to the canons of high agriculture is a skillful act of reclamation and ironic distancing.

Like many of his premodern predecessors, Torrez uses an examination of the angelic or divine as an excuse to luxuriate in the physicality of his radiant unclothed subjects. To Take Human Form is a prime example: a female angel bends above in a classic evocation of an Impressionist bather, while upstage of her the figure reappears, here wingless and newly mortal in form. A crafty shift in cultural assumptions is evident as Torrez transforms the Chicana naked from an exotic female, regarded from one side colonialist eyes, into a manifestation of the female ideal, sincerely at handed if somewhat sexist in its objectification.

Torrez's portrayals compare fascinatingly with like postmodern polar opposites as prosecute Williams, but he operates powerfully within an L.A. context that includes John Valadez and, more obscurely still with stunning similarity, Margaret Munz The angelic symbolism is a natural choice for L.A. artists, and, with of that kind inconography and the recent social unrest in mind, the dispassionate probing in Torrez's greatest in quantity powerful work in the display Duality of Discovery, is disturbing. Here the 16th-century spirit of Jusepe de Ribera lays in an appearance. Against a luminous backdrop of baroquely shaded ocean, an expressionless female angel spears the side of an agonized Latino martyr. The rich layers of political, historical and esthetic relation and meanings reward the viewer who takes the time to trace their significance. In this quincentennial year, it is a remarkable journey we undertake with Torrez as he examines the branchings of his native and European roots

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group