The Enchanting World of a Chicano Trickster: The Whimsy in José Lozano’s Pictures

Metro/La Brea and Exposition Station/One of Eight Panels, ceramic tile, 2012

By Dianna Marisol Santillano, Special to Brooklyn & Boyle 

In Junot Diaz’s novel, This is How you Lose Her (2012), he tells of the Dominican experience in the U.S. and in particular Dominican love and life in New Jersey. The narratives portrayed are of everyday folks that simultaneously occupy two cultures and how they shape and negotiate their reality as they seek to redefine their identities. What is refreshing and distinct in his work is that his subjects are complex individuals full of gravitas, whose very real depiction collapses the fine line between good and evil.

Visually, and on the opposite coast, one can locate a similar type of authentic yet nuanced and multidimensional representation in the rich imagery produced by Chicano artist José Lozano. Born in Los Angeles, but having spent his childhood in the borderlands of Juarez, Mexico before returning to southern California where he attended art school and now resides, Lozano’s art bursts from these demographical and cardinal seams; unleashing an art that is at once whimsical, with its strong element of humor, but which is also endowed with an ever engaging tension and paradox that engrosses the viewer completely.

In his pictures, Lozano keenly captures and portrays a physical and psychic space of working-class folks, or gente, complete with culturally laden signifiers, portrayed in various social situations. Lozano’s worldbuilding is comprised of both fictional and nonfictional elements, settings and people, where random propositions are delivered on the picture-plane, unhinging the genre of straight up representational portraiture by endowing the non-fictional world with the sublime or obscure, resulting in visual magic.

Cropped snapshots of nightlife, with folks hanging out, couples hooking up, while others wrestle with existential dilemmas, are all rendered in a style that conflates popular illustration, absurdist Expressionism, and Mexican Modernist’s populism with Fauvist aesthetic sensibilities. Henri Matisse comes to mind with his love for color and flat surfaces and spontaneous flair as does George Grosz’s scathing, satirically caricatured depictions from early 20th Century Berlin.

This spontaneity in Lozano’s work is not by accident, as “he wants instant results, and therefore does not paint in oils”[1] —instead his media ranges from serigraphs, acrylic, gouache, multimedia, among others. In the spirit of ‘automatic-drawing’ or automatism as developed by the Surrealists, Lozano’s works are “painted drawings”, created rapidly and mined from his deeply imaginative mind. He avoids drawing from life, resulting in an incredibly personal style that consists of random juxtapositions infused with a Surrealistic dimension.

A quixotic social scene is portrayed in Angels Lit by Sin. Most of the subjects are sitting down and gaze arrestingly back at the viewer. The naked women dancing upon tabletops also appear to have stopped as a counterpoint to the weightless angel hovering in the background. The ambiguity of the scene marks much of Lozano’s work but it is precisely why it captivates. Who are the angels that are lit by sin— is it the dancing women?

Likewise, in the intriguing gouache on paper work titled Los Globos Lounge, the subjects are again set in a social situation with globos or balloons drifting away in the background. What is noteworthy in this series are the brick walls in the background serving as a sort of boundary or border. What are these walls demarcating? What lies beyond that wall? On the one side are sexy women and men smoking cigarettes, and on the other, a different type of promise —a different type of carnavalesque adventure; perhaps an innocent or pristine landscape, paradise? This demarcation is addressed in El Mictlan, in which the men and women are on one side of the wall and two vibrant angels on the other. The Spanish title of this work roughly translates into English as the underworld." In comic strip fashion, two of the figures have text balloons and are in a conversation. Lozano explains, “the lad is leaving to the other side, (and) the older man tells him “Why do you leave kid, over there they take your soul, here just your head”. [2]

In Lozano’s art, public spaces and events are made to feel intimate, and despite the incongruous nature of his work, the personal is there; for even though these works could be seen as portraiture, the fact is that these characters are figments of Lozano’s imagination. They are informed by personal observations of his community and family throughout his lifetime. Lozano certainly knows his subjects and approaches them with deep connection, as he chronicles his community and its popular culture in his multifaceted art practice.

In an unexpected shift from images drawn from his community are Two Geishas/Sushi  and Utamaro Lounge, where those who populate Lozano’s unconventional pantheon occupy the foreground before a massive backdrop of two geishas in an iconic Japanese landscape. The superimposition and juxtaposition of these two distinct styles and the unexpected combination of aesthetics, bridges representations of the ‘other’—creating a pictorial chasm that is anything but jejune. The geisha scenes in Utamaro Lounge are smooth and rendered in classic Japanese woodblock print style, while along the bottom his subjects are rendered in a caricature style with those quick rapid-fire strokes and oddly cropped poses, and yet they all similarly capture the gaze of the viewer.

 Certainly Lozano’s trickster mentality (he calls himself “el travieso” ), and his mischievous play with imagery topples our notion of ‘relatedness’ by placing together non-sequitur visual propositions in settings like lounge bars in the city of Angels.

Furthermore, like in Junot Diaz’s narratives, Lozano’s subjects depart from the all too pervasive trope in art and literature of the all-suffering immigrant. Expressed with a lyrical texture and complex layering of forlorn, diasporic love and life, in both instances their subjects are based on what the author and the artist each know best. Through their art, they convey their respective communities authentically as bi-national, hardworking people whose lives resonate with sensuality, desire, contradiction and dimensionality.

José Lozano’s long artistic career consists of a varied artistic practice that also includes: artist books; paper dolls of famous people like Frida Kahlo and others of men and women sporting lucha libre masks; and a recent public art commission from for the L.A. Metro Expo Line This public work commission is of eight art panels of Lotería cards, the popular Mexican game of chance that uses iconically decorated playing cards, but reinterpreted through Lozano’s signature style and individualized for this project.

Lozano’s art has lasting enigmatic resonance, resulting in an aesthetic that is pure Lozano. We look forward to what this maestro of visual mischief, reconfiguration and humor thinks of next.

[1] From art talk at Fremont Gallery in South Pasadena, CA on March 1, 2014

[2] Lozano quote, Sept. 10, 2014

An adjunct professor at California State University, Los Angeles Dianna Marisol Santillano has published her gallery essays and art criticism widely. This article first appeared in our March 2016 print edition, an issue which featured cover art by Maestro Lozano. We are proud to share online in honor of a beloved community artist whose life and work will not soon be forgotten. José "El que pinta" Lozano. ¡Presente!