Tomorrow 2021: Freddy Villalobos

Influenced by my upbringing in South Central Los Angeles during the 1990s, I combine references ranging from conceptual art, revolution, rap, philosophical and biblical text, tattooed imagery, sound, and inner-city subcultures. I use these mutations of street vernacular to examine paradoxical issues of America’s social structures and power relations. Simultaneously, rejecting and assimilating multiple systems of ideologies, I elicit discourse centred on exposing dissonance as a way to re-evaluate precarious contemporary ethics.

The multi-part sculpture, the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was (2021), pulls on car trunk culture, where the boxes are used to both conceal and showcase. The sound vibrates the boxes, neon sign, and the viewer's body, looping a playlist of 15 songs. The prints showcased are tattoo ephemera. I was always haunted by the idea of a murder which would cut me of irremediably from your world (1-8)  (2021) imagines spaces, times and acts where bodies deemed as hyper masculine are able to interact intimately. Hoover Hand Movie (2016), draws on Yvonne Rainer’s canonical work, Hand Movie (1966) to explore ideas of nonverbal communication where the two hands function as a sculptural duet to discuss class, culture and limitations of access to understanding.