Vincent Valdez The Strangest Fruit

April 27 - May 29

Artist's Talk and Exhibit Reception:
April 29, 5:30pm, Wilson Hall's Concert Hall

The Strangest Fruit Radio Hour
A Multi-Media Performance by OLLIN
May 20, 6pm, Lenfest Center's Keller Theater

Vincent Valdez's work consists of large-scale hyper-realistic oil and pastel works that focus on subjects with socio-political themes. In The Strangest Fruit series, Valdez explores the widespread lynching of people of Mexican descent in Texas between 1848 and 1928. While lynching of African Americans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has received scholarly and popular attention, very little has been devoted to the lynching of hundreds of Latinos during the same period. Valdez connects the historical mistreatment of Latinos to the present by depicting men dressed in contemporary garb, positioned as if hanging from a tree or a stage, though no actual noose or lynching stage is visible in the paintings. His imagery explores the past treatment of Latinos to comment upon their present marginalization in the United States. Vincent Valdez received his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2000. In 2004 at age 26, Valdez was the youngest artist to have a solo exhibition at the McNay Museum in San Antonio, Texas. A recipient of the Skowhegan School of Painting '05 and The Vermont Studio Center '11, Valdez lives and works in Firestation #15, his restored 1928 Firestation in San Antonio, TX.
To learn more about Valdez's work, please visit his website:
http://vincentvaldezart.com

In conjunction with the exhibition, we will also present The Strangest Fruit Radio Hour, a multi-media event that combines the artwork of Staniar Gallery exhibiting artist Vincent Valdez with the high-energy, genre-crossing music of the Los Angeles based band Ollin. The eight-piece band includes saxophone, accordion, acoustic Mariachi bass, drums, guitar and Vincent Valdez on trumpet. The original musical compositions in the performance reflect the bands' many influences: Texas two-step, Swing, Cumbia, Klezmer, Mexican and Irish fused folk and rock and roll.

A complimentary bilingual (Spanish/English) exhibit catalogue available, while supplies last. Please contact Staniar Gallery for more details.

Above: The Strangest Fruit, 2013, oil on canvas, 55 x 92 inches (Courtesy of the artist, Photo by Mark Menjivar)