AUSTIN, TX.- The Contemporary Austin is showing an exhibition of paintings from the last twenty years by groundbreaking multidisciplinary artist Eamon Ore-Giron. On view at the Jones Center on Congress Avenue since March 3 to August 20, 2023, Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago examines the trajectory of Ore-Giron’s paintings, and explores the complex layering of identities, histories, and artistic legacies that have influenced his art.

Featuring works created between 1998 and 2021, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago puts the artist’s early figurative works in dialogue with his recent works in abstraction that place both painting traditions within a broader and more complicated history of form in the Americas. The show culminates with six new paintings from the artist’s Infinite Regress series created specifically for the exhibition. These stunning large-scale paintings, rendered with metallic gold on raw linen, draw upon an international discourse of geometric abstraction that spans centuries, incorporating references that range from ancient Andean architecture to twentieth-century modernism.

Ernest and Sarah Butler Executive Director & CEO sharon maidenberg shared, “Eamon Ore-Giron’s work is really dynamic — his practice moves from figuration and abstraction and pulls inspiration from Mesoamerican deities, the American Southwest, indigenous and craft traditions, and even Russian suprematism. The work is almost restless, which I think is something everyone can relate to right now.”

Eamon Ore-Giron examines the personal and historical ramifications of cultural hybridity. Raised in Tucson, Arizona, he is inspired by his roots in the American Southwest, his visits to his father’s hometown of Huancayo, Peru, and his time spent as a practicing artist in California and Mexico. This exhibition brings together for the first time three pivotal chapters in Ore-Girón’s career:

• Figurative works from the early 2000s, which draw upon his roots in the American Southwest and his familial ties to Peru, to create a surreal world where North and South American cultures and traditions freely intermingle.
• Paintings from his Talking Shit series from the late 2010s and a new painting from 2021, in which Ore-Giron explores the generative possibilities that emerge from re-imagining Pre- Columbian deities and how they are interpreted in contemporary society.
• Sublime paintings from Ore-Giron’s recent, ongoing body of work, the Infinite Regress series, begun in 2015. In these paintings, the artist’s view toward the past is further transmuted into a language of abstraction and a deep engagement with the symbolic, historical, and ritualistic meanings associated with gold.

Eamon Ore-Giron (b. 1973, Tucson, Arizona; lives and works in Los Angeles, California) blends a wide range of visual styles and influences in his brightly colored abstract geometric paintings. Referencing indigenous and craft traditions as well as 20th-century avant-gardes, his paintings move between temporalities and resonate across cultural contexts. Ore-Giron also works in video and music, and his interdisciplinary projects explore the interrelationship of sound, color, rhythm, and pattern, and make manifest a history of transnational exchange. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, as a solo practitioner and as part of collaborative endeavor. His artwork has been featured in the exhibitions Eamon Ore-Giron: Non Plus Ultra at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University (2021); Soft Power at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019); Made in L.A. 2018 at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and a solo exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (2005), among others. His work as part of LOS JAICHACKERS, a two-person collaborative with Julio César Morales, has been shown at Pérez Art Museum Miami (2013) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2008), and in Prospect.3, New Orleans (2014). He has been selected to realize major public commissions by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and LA METRO for subway stations in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, respectively. Ore-Giron received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION

Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago is curated by Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The presentation at The Contemporary Austin is organized by Julie Le, Assistant Curator.

EXHIBITION CATALOG

A fully illustrated exhibition catalog, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning, published by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and Rizzoli Electa accompanies the exhibition, with texts by Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the MCA Denver; C. Ondine Chavoya, Professor of Art History, University of Texas at Austin; and Jace Clayton, artist, writer, and DJ. The catalog explores Ore- Giron’s approach to de-colonizing the medium of painting, his impact within the California art scene, and his seminal work as a musician and DJ who highlights the intersections between North and South American sounds. The publication was made possible with generous support from The Fries Foundation.