An intriguing mix of traditional Mexican imagery and intricate abstract pieces of print art covered the walls of the La Petite Mort Gallery Feb. 1.
It was the vernissage for Guillermo Trejo’s At the Other Side of Lake Erie, a collection of prints created during his art residency at Zygote Press in Cleveland, Ohio.
Trejo, who uses a plastic similar to linoleum to do his work, said that printmaking, with its emphasis on repetition, allowed him to explore each image he created in a different way.
“All editions are like different combinations and different approaches to the same image. For me it’s kind of interesting just to see each one as an individual,” he said.
Trejo’s exhibit is one that embraces both the political and the traditional. The centrepiece of the exhibit is a series of six large framed prints bearing the same abstract design.
“The abstract works are called the debate series. They are based on the elections in the United States,” he said.
“I was looking at the debates and doing some drawings so those came from there.”
“It’s interesting that he made them around the time of the American election because I can see it in the colours, but I feel like it is a lot more calm and elegant than the election actually was,” said Laura Carusi, curatorial communications assistant at the gallery.
While politics did influence his work, Trejo said he also drew inspiration from his roots, to create such familiar images as the monkey, skull and rose.
“The time that I was in Cleveland, there was also the celebration of the day of the dead, so there’s a big community of Mexicans there, so somehow there was an [influence] from the community,” he said. “I was invited to participate in the parade and that made me take some inspiration from my background and my country.”
Trejo said past projects also influenced the art in this collection. “I had a show at the Ottawa Gallery in August. It was all about the destruction of monuments,” he said.
“I’m really interested in the idea of how we develop these constructions and then when they lose their objective and their meaning, they are destroyed.”
Out of this interest came the piece entitled ‘he was someone important’, a series of 10 prints in which a warrior gradually fades from his monument, from the head down. Trejo used a woodcut from a Cleveland print shop to create the piece.
“I found this image from a monument. Nobody knows where it is or who [the man] is,” he explained.
Though he has a passion for printmaking, Trejo said that other art forms were in no way off limits to him.
“I think it’s a misconception, the fact that artists are specialists in one thing,” he said. “Art is art, and not one medium defines the artist.”
“The only thing I don’t do is performance,” he laughed.
Gallery director Guy Bérubé described the abstract pieces as a “visual challenge,” and said Trejo brought familiarity to his work as well.
“He’s got a charisma, but yet there’s a style to the work he does that creates a comfort level that people can relate to,” Bérubé said.
At The Other Side of Lake Erie will be on display at La Petite Mort gallery for the month of February.
