Altered Perspectives

Brandon Maldonado rewrites the script at Pop Gallery

"A lot is based around mythology and Joseph Campbell's idea of myth, and to a certain degree, I've always been a storyteller through my art," Brandon Maldonado says.

Hot on the heels of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Arts' GenNext exhibit, Maldonado is gearing up for the reception for Identidades, a new series showing at Pop Gallery which runs through the end of August. This includes showing during Contemporary Hispanic Market, when Maldonado is slated to make an appearance.

The series is a combination of traditional retablo-esque style in muted colors and contemporary oil painting with a sly nod to Mark Ryden and Mike Giant and a staggering amount of hidden (and not-so-hidden) symbology and history. Together, the works focus on the Spanish and Indigenous history of what is now New Mexico, though with consistent use of role reversal and subtext, Maldonado's understanding of the era comes through in jarring yet magnetic fashion. If we can call his last Pop exhibit—the visionary and cubist-leaning Neo-Picassoism—brilliant (which we can, because it was), it had to walk so Identidades could run. In other words, as the culmination of a lifetime of practice, failure, risk-taking, detours and development, Maldonado's most current series is easily his best, easily the most fleshed-out and easily has the most to say.

"It was heartbreaking when I was 18 and applied to art school, got accepted, but didn't have a scholarship," he reminisces. "But that's OK, because you learn technical things [at art school]—but if you have nothing to say, what's the point of what you're doing?"

Maldonado wound up attending the since-closed College of Santa Fe's satellite campus in Albuquerque, a city he's called home since elementary school, and there he studied philosophy and religion. From a philosophical standpoint, he learned to imbue his work with messaging; from a religious standpoint, he pays homage to both the roots and subversion of famous "religious" works while unpacking the idea of real history.

"In the past hundred years, especially in America, we've lost track of what art's original function was," Maldonado explains. "You go back to the cave paintings of Lascaux, you go back to the early Catholic church—and for hundreds of years, these people were illiterate, the Mass was in Latin, so they'd go into these rooms with the beautiful architecture and the beautiful art, and it was informing them; but I use that cultural costume and use it to say something. Picasso always said if you put an eyeball in the socket, people take it for granted—the idea of using things we're familiar with, but making people question [them]. … I'm not saying I have the answers, but I believe in the questions."

Maldonado's search for the questions came after meeting former State Historian Estevan Rael Galvez, whose historical knowledge opened Maldonado's eyes.

"Everybody's hands are dirty," he says, referencing past and current events—the now-kaput Entrada pageant, for example, which rewrote the reconquest of New Mexico as a bloodless event. As if. In Maldonado's "La Conquistadora," he examines just that by juxtaposing a beautiful woman with dark accoutrements. Maldonado says it could be seen as controversial, but he's really in search of the truth.

"They weren't conquering over here with love and friendship, and we carry both the blood of the conqueror and the conquered," Maldonado continues. "I grew up as naive as everyone else, thinking, 'I'm a descendant of a conquistador!' But what is the truth? It's somewhere between the lines."

Take "The Rape of the New World," for example. In the piece, Maldonado references the famous and oft-reinterpreted story of the warrior Popocatépetl and his beloved Iztaccíhuatl, imagery for which is often rendered as an Aztec man carrying a freshly dead woman. Maldonado, however, recreates the warrior as a Spanish colonist kidnapping an Indigenous woman. Dead-eyed and beaming with religion, the man is represented as a centaur, recalling the Indigenous reaction to the Spaniards original arriving in the New World on horseback—something they'd never before seen and something that must have been terrifying.

Elsewhere, in works such as "The Gods Made War," Maldonado continues
re-contextualizing by taking the imagery of the archangel St. Michael, often depicted slaying a dragon, and recasting it as Spanish against Aztec, pitting the so-called saint against a skeletal, scorpion-like beast. At first glance, it appears solely religious, but the longer one looks and the more details become apparent, the more an ugly truth bubbles to the surface amidst the bold brush strokes.

"Most of the history of the conquest we have came from the Spanish, and it's very one-sided," Maldonado explains. "We like to see the world black and white, but in reality, just like the Aztecs versus the conquistadores, it's two bad forces with selfish intentions going at it."

We'd give away more, but it's vital to see the show yourself. Take Maldonado's colorblindness into account, as well as his studied and fresh intentions. There is much to explore and uncover, but Identidades might just be the most moving show I've seen this year.

Brandon Maldonado: Identidades
6 pm Saturday July 27. Free.
Pop Gallery,
125 Lincoln Ave., Ste. 11,
820-0788

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