Neo-Chicanonismo in Abstraction, Surrealism, and Latinidad
Featuring Gus Alva, Isaac Pelayo, and Joaquin Stacey
Part Two of the LA Futurism – Summer Series
Neo-Chicanonismo in Abstraction, Surrealism, and Latinidad is the second chapter of the LA Futurism – Summer Series, a curatorial journey examining contemporary painting in Los Angeles through Chicano legacy, futurism, and the ever-shifting visual languages of culture, memory, and resistance, reclaiming historically Eurocentric genres—abstraction and surrealism—and reshaping them through lived experience, cultural memory, and migration.
This exhibition traces the influence of Chicano and Latinx artists on European-rooted movements—abstraction and surrealism—and how those genres have been reworked through migration, hybridity, and lived experience. Here, abstraction is no longer purely formal, and surrealism is no longer solely psychological; both become tools to reflect the layered realities of identity, displacement, and cultural inheritance.
As with earlier Futurist ideals—speed, transformation, rupture—these artists pull from the dynamism of contemporary life: technology, globalization, street culture, cinema, music, and digital memory. In doing so, they subtract, subvert, and add to the traditions they engage. No longer fixed to typecasts or narrow expectations, their work expands the grammar of painting into a transnational, post-Chicano language—one uniquely shaped by Los Angeles.
Long viewed as academic or elite, abstraction and surrealism have often excluded BIPOC makers from their legacy. But here in Los Angeles, these genres are transformed—infused with barrio sensibilities, ancestral echoes, street aesthetics, and the rhythm of daily life. In this iteration of LA Futurism, the work doesn’t mimic—it redefines.
These artists subtract, subvert, and remix the past to speak from the present. The result is a language not just of rebellion, but of quiet belief: the universal desire to be seen, and the right to create from the specificity of your story. In an age of global interconnectedness, the barriers between genres and identities continue to collapse. The work here speaks not only to Latinidad, but to something shared across boundaries—a belief that every personal truth, no matter how local or overlooked, carries global resonance. This is the heart of LA Futurism: demystifying dominant narratives, disrupting typecasts, and honoring the makers whose stories were never meant to be archived, but insist on being told.
Gus Alva abstracts the landscape, using color and form to explore geography not just as place, but as memory and migration. His work dissolves physical terrain into emotional topography.
"The Role of Surrealism & Abstraction in relation to Gus Alva's artistic Voice."
The presence of Surrealism and Abstraction depicted in the history of fine art always have existed for me as an inaccessible privilege. An omnipresent figure in the distance, moving further away as I made my attempts to close the gap between the knowledge of art history, and how it may apply to my current reality. These world famous visuals that are meant to suspend my reality, often would just take me on a thought spiral to reckon with the world of knowledge I was not meant to be privy to. As a Mexican-American, native Angeleno, born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. These artistic voices were not relatable or representative of my active experiences or ongoing struggles. My own artistic voice is a derivative of an experiential catalog of memories that are rooted in my community's landscape and its contentious environment. 10 year old paint jobs on homes/buildings, houseless encampments, iron fences, graffiti-writing, and street fires. A list of poetic observations that continues to help calibrate my own instincts as an artist, challenges my logic, or refines any misinformed ideas I may have. Through this, I've learned about the power that exists in the reclaiming of Abstraction/Surrealism as it relates to your story as a maker of color. It inherently becomes a radical tool to tell the story that has yet to have been shared. LA Futurism is about demystifying monolithic trapplings inorder to liberate and reimagine a diverse future in art practitioners. Ultimately, all in service to contribute to a shift of cultural collective thought for the next generation of thinkers.
My practice is rooted in the resourceful qualities intrinsic to my community. I have a distinct memory of my mother cooking what she called, "chicken dinner", without chicken. A dish that consists of chicken bouillon, handmade tortillas, and water.
It was an ongoing joke in our household, but as simple as it was, at its core it is a representation of a creative surrealist and abstract thought. Survival as a state of being naturally excludes theory, which inevitably forces one to find creative solutions or perspectives. If time is pinned against your existence, there is no privilege to generate theory. Action or inaction fundamentally becomes a central focus that dictates your quality of life. Abstract ideas become fiddler or not applicable. Which leads me to the inspiring abstract and resilient nature to graffiti-writing in the city Los Angeles. Graffiti-writing as a study has been the anchor that has spiritually guided my artistic practice.
Isaac Pelayo channels a surrealism shaped by questioning—what it means to exist in spaces where your very presence is politicized. His work bends realism to reveal spiritual and cultural truths embedded in the everyday.
Isaac Pelayo ( b. 1996 ) is a head on crash collision between The Renaissance and Street Art.
In a household where constant turmoil and violence were more apparent than most a young Pelayo met escape and peace within the confines of himself and his own creativity. Hispanic born in the heavy beating heart of Los Angeles on the seventh day of June 1996. Pelayo was caught in the crossfires of everything that surrounded him but art served as his only guidance. After dropping out of college Pelayo turned from his hyperrealistic pencil portraits to oil painting where his passions grew more immensely.
As of today Pelayo’s work is most influenced and fueled by the crème de la crème of old master painters like Da Vinci, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Velazquez as well as graffiti artists such as RETNA, Shepard Fairey, and EL MAC. In 2017 his work caught the attention and landed in the firm grasp of renown rapper and collector Alvin “Westside Gunn” Worthy. He has created several album covers and artworks for the Buffalo rap moguls music label Griselda Records including his personal collection. Pelayo’s paintings are widely recognized and sought out from all over the globe. His collectors include Sean “Diddy” Combs, Westside Gunn, Benny The Butcher, Jeff Hamilton, Shepard Fairey, Jaysse Lopez, and Everlast of House of Pain just to name a few.
Pelayo is often described as the coming of A New Renaissance. The juxtaposition between his meticulously rendered brushwork of classical style imagery and loose expressionistic careless drips with the use of oil paints, spray paint, and oil sticks create a dramatic atmosphere that is nothing less than a sexy intoxicating marriage of two worlds that don’t inherently belong. The motifs we see in his paintings feature a third eye accompanied by a smiley face which was also adopted by Westside Gunn on several projects during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic which led to Isaac’s recent growing success.
Joaquin Stacey offers a global take on Latinidad, infusing symbolic language with historical resonance. His canvases are cross-cultural portals, informed by migration, mythology, and the weight of inheritance.
Joaquín Stacey-Calle (he/him/they, b.2000, Quito, Ecuador) is an interdisciplinary artist working with painting, performance, installation, microbes, photography, and food. He graduated with a BFA from Florida International University in 2022 and received his MFA from Otis College of Art and Design (CA) in 2024. Stacey-Calle develops conversations around history,identity, memory, figurative and landscape painting, daily rituals, Western ontology, and the human condition. He is interested in the digestion and fermentation of his quotidian surroundings and the cultural productions he has consumed throughout his life. Like his understanding of his diasporic self, his work is rooted in memories of his home and life in Ecuador, Miami, and Los Angeles and then tethered to a new experience of unfixed imagery and materiality that remains ever-changing. His current work explores the tension
between the sacred, profane, divine, and the mundane. He has exhibited throughout LA, San Diego, Miami, and Mexico in places like Charlie James Gallery, Make Room Gallery, Goodmother Gallery, Proyectos N.A.S.A.L., The Proxy Gallery, California Center for the Arts, Escondido (San Diego),
Homework Gallery, The Laundromat Art Space, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Pinecrest Gardens Gallery, Ateliê Alê (São Paulo), and the Ecuadoran Consulate in Miami. Stacey-Calle was part of the 2022 & 2023 Summer Open, a residency hosted by The Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami.