John Trevino & Connie Martin Trevino
How far are we from YONDER? John Trevino and Connie Martin Trevino journey through the ocean’s depths and vastness of the natural world to paint landscapes and craft ceramic creatures that imagine and populate the unknown destination with wonder. Hailing from Long Beach, CA, and Chicago, IL respectively, this creative couple has oriented themselves with elements out of site. Navigating above and below, they live in yesteryear’s yonder and follow artistic inclinations that expand painting, photography, collage, and clay in every direction. Visitors arrive at YONDER for an optimistic outlook of distance that collapses the air of difference. We’re enveloped in surrealist surroundings and are greeted by guardians—the Trevino’s independent practices are married here as non-neutral meeting grounds.
John Trevino’s large-scale acrylic landscapes collapse concepts of place and time. Ancient worlds emerge from a mist-muted color pallet enveloped by lush foliage and accented with geometric forms, revealing the structures of culture and composition. The textural surface alludes to our built environment, while the horizon lines ground one’s gaze at sea level. This perspective is influenced by the artist’s sensory experiences diving and stewarding swimmers through the open ocean.
Yielding land and water, Connie Martin Trevino’s sculptural ceramics emerge from the organic formulas of clay and the fluidity of her imagination. Hand-built, these hybrids evolve past plant and ocean life, combining animal forms and nodding to the appendages of the human body. These figures embody protection against societal stressors faced by folks of color. The supernatural sculptures stand in for the unseen deities and change agents who shape our unknown future over YONDER.
This exhibition is curated by JosephBrandon Thomas.
Los Angeles based artist John Trevino was born in 1972 and raised in Long Beach, CA. He received his B.A. in Black Studies and Art Studio in 1995 from U.C. Santa Barbara and MFA in painting from Howard University in 2000. In his work, Trevino pursues information that is acquired from personal experiences, observations, and reflections on the surrounding environment as a way of documenting aspects of contemporary culture. Working primarily in painting and mixed media, Trevino feels the range of these materials mirror the diversity of his experiences and allow the artist the flexibility and freedom to visually navigate this territory.
In addition to studio work, he has painted murals in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., as well as exhibited work in both cities. In 2011 he received an ARC grant through the Center for Cultural Innovation in Los Angeles to complete a series of underwater photographs in which he photographed residents from the South Bay communities of Los Angeles in everyday clothes in the Pacific Ocean. In 2015, images from this series were selected for the Metro Silver Line project along the 110 Freeway and expanded into two larger compositions that were then installed at the USC/37th St Station. Most recently he was one of ten inaugural grantees of the Los Angeles Lakers’ In The Paint program. In his continued pursuit of aquatic themes in his work, he is currently in the process of customizing a pair of kayaks to reach some of the more inaccessible parts of the southern California coastline in order to scuba dive from them and use these experiences to inform his future work.
Connie Martin Trevino is a ceramicist, photographer and collage artist who was born on Chicago’s south side. Her interest in art started at an early age after receiving her first professional camera in High school. Connie has developed her personal style over 20+ years while living in cities like Chicago, Washington, DC And Los Angeles.
Her focus has been documenting moments and experiences such as morning dew on a spiders web, nudes, portraits to protest. through her photography and Abstracting the human figure she started working on paper collages which led to creating her hybrid creatures. With The introduction of clay handbuilding became an obsession and a way to bring the paper to life. Her ceramic sculptures bridges her artistic passions and also creates a path which hopefully leads to expanding and engaging people in a dialogue about observations of the world or other possible worlds that could exist. Connie is inspired by nature and is Continually focusing on things big and small the micro and the macro and the possibilities that these creatures can live together anywhere and everywhere.