A group exhibition featuring new and recent works by 25 local and emerging artists.
October 22 – December 9, 2022
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Stay Gallery is pleased to present CYCLES, a group exhibition featuring new and recent works by 25 local and emerging artists. The number 10 and the passage of a decade is known to symbolize the completion of a cycle and beginning of a new one; a state of rebirth, renewal and creation. CYCLES aims to illuminate how cyclical occurrences in our personal lives, communities, histories, collective consciousness and the natural world impact and shape the human experience. This exhibition brings together emerging artists from Southeast LA and the greater LA County region with artists that have impacted our space and community over the past decade.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Amy Doyo, Andre Hernandez, Angel Acordagoitia, Bodeck Luna, Carmel Katumba (THEZONKYGIRL), Chromaven, Clarisse Abelarde, Cristian Castro, Daisy Velasco, Daniela Garcia Hamilton, Eduardo Viramontes, Eloise Rae, The Happy Joy, Jacqueline Valenzuela, Josh Vasquez, Jynx Prado, Karina Vazquez, Koituses, Luis Zavala Tapia, Marcus Gonzalo Bañuelos, Nia Simone, Sean Kirkland, Sergio Robleto, SUNI MULLEN, Tamara Ramos
RECEPTIONS
Opening Reception
Saturday, October 22, 2022
7 – 11pm
Closing Reception
Friday, December 9, 2022
7 – 10pm
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
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Amy Doyo is an Asian-American Contemporary artist who draws inspiration from discoveries in space and nature and portrays the unavoidable journey of finding her place in her community, society, and the world.
Amy is currently studying Drawing and Painting at the California State University of Long Beach School of Art. In 2021 and 2022, her work has been featured in several shows including the annual School of Arts INSIGHTS exhibition and student shows Flux, A Nude Day, and Nuance. Amy is a Ryman Arts alumni and has received her Associate’s Degree in Studio Arts from Rio Hondo College. She received the Outstanding Student Award in Painting and Drawing from Rio Hondo’s Division of Arts & Cultural Programs for two consecutive years. Her work was shown in both Rio Hondo College Student shows and on the cover of Rio Hondo’s student art publication in 2020, River’s Voice.
In 2022, Amy was featured in an all-Filipino artists group show titled Tambayan at Los Angeles City College, Vama Art Gallery, and co-curated Unheard Voices, a group exhibition with an artist-run collective, Nous-Ance.
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Andre Hernandez is a painter and digital creator who lives in Pico Rivera, California.
His paintings demonstrate glitched patterns and geometry can work in unison. He combines elements of mindfulness and futurism in his digital work.
Andre's talents are manifested in many ways through multiple projects. He is in charge of art direction for music label Synecdoche Tapes which is heavily inspired by 90's dance music ranging from Jungle, Garage and House. He has lent his talents to a variety of musical artists by designing works on albums, compilation mixes, vinyl records, VHS covers and more.
He has personally designed merchandise and has released prints and magazines adorn with his artwork.
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As a child, Angel Acordagoitia was always surrounded by art: watching his father sketch, drawing with his older sister, or visiting his uncle’s gallery in Santa Clarita Valley. During his late teenage years, Angel’s uncle – a successful artist who studied in Mexico City – took him under his wing. Through his uncle, Angel learned about art history and how to prepare and create murals using various techniques. During his time at Cerritos College, Angel took a life-drawing course. He applied the discipline of creating and mixing medias from all of the experiences he had cultivated through his family and attending Cerritos College.
Angel has shown his series of art and installations in art galleries throughout Los Angeles. In 2019, he received the “Master Artist” award at the Santa Fe Springs Art Fest.
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An immigrant artist from Manila, Philippines, Bodeck Luna has been creating pieces that explore the relationship between nostalgia, social empowerment, and decolonization. Modern society’s heavy reliance on disposable technology and consumerism is a recurring theme in his work. His background in street art heavily influences his figurative paintings, illustrations and murals.
Bodeck’s site-specific murals aimed to honor local residents are located across Long Beach and its neighboring cities via Pow!Wow! Long Beach, private commissions or projects with the city. Some of his notable collaborations include Apple, LA Metro, Long Beach City Hall, Music Center LA, Aquarium of the Pacific and Covered California. Bodeck showcases paintings, murals and curates other artists’ pieces in DIY pop-up art shows throughout the city to display other up and coming emerging artists. Bodeck was appointed as the Art Director for the first annual Long Beach Filipino Festival in 2018. From commercial and private commissions to album covers, he aims to bind the community by showcasing local talent and businesses. He was invited in early 2020 at Harvard Graduate School of Education to host a lecture on street art and activism.
Aside from community art activations, he’s also involved in community organizing efforts within the National Democracy Movement of the Philippines through the Philippine US Solidarity Organization (PUSO SoCal) which is composed of Filipinx & non-Filipinx that defends people's rights, justice, and peace in the Philippines, as well as strengthen intersectional ties of solidarity in the US.
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THEZONKYGIRL, formally known as Carmel Katumba, is a Congolese, Long Beach-based painter, visual designer, and DJ whose mission statement is to encourage her community and society to embrace their individuality and what makes them different. The fine artist draws inspiration from her unique cultural upbringing, which has allowed her to create original and distinctive art.
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Christina “Chromaven” Dias is a Portuguese-American with humble beginnings as a child artist when gifted her first box of Crayola. Always coloring outside the lines, her work transmuted from paper to skin when she became a Makeup-Artist at age 20. A love affair with pigment ensued. She became awestruck by the transformative effect of color not only visually, but emotionally within each of her clients. Vexed her ephemeral creations, she enrolled in CSULB and achieved a BFA in Illustration with a concentration in Graphic Design in 2012. Inspired by dreams and duality, Christina applies a cognitive approach to her work that endures in assorted mediums affixed to color, contrast, texture, displacement, and symbolism. She has been shown in numerous galleries and her works can be found in various print, digital publications, and multimedia marketing platforms.
Christina currently resides in sunny SoCal as a Freelance Illustrator, Graphic Designer, and MUA. You can find her nestled in between her laptop, brushes, paints, and plants as her ankles are kept warm by her two discerning doxies.
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Clarisse Abelarde is a current BFA student in CSU Long Beach specializing in drawing and painting. As an immigrant from the Philippines, she is incredibly influenced by adaptation and the changes that occur when assimilating to a culture foreign to her own upbringing. Displacement and disorientation are two prominent themes in her paintings as she attempts to pinpoint her place in society. Her work deals with issues of identity and representation.
As she was forming her education in Los Angeles City College, her body of work was more carefully made and calculated, while their subject matter dealt with the monotony of daily life, and the impact of social and digital media on identity.
As she develops her more recent work, Abelarde’s paintings echo the visceral impact of the abstract expressionist movement as she is drawn to their physicality and raw emotion. Combining the techniques and skills she has accumulated throughout the years, she sees a balance between chaos and structure.
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Cristian Castro is a self-taught industrial designer and contemporary artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He intentionally repurposes discarded vintage household appliances and old mechanical tools and incorporates them into his robotic works of art. He was always fascinated by the function of all things, driving him to discover, dissect, and dismantle any manner of toys and machines he could get his hands on, ultimately fusing them together as artistic creations junkyard parts reimagined with the vision of a NASA engineer.
Cristian’s debut solo exhibition “BONES OF STEEL” was hosted at Stay Gallery in 2013. Since then, his work has been exhibited internationally and nationally, including MOlAA Museum of Latin American Art, Salt Fine Art Gallery, and Building Bridges Art Exchange on public art projects among others.
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Daisy Velasco (b. 1998, Los Angeles, CA) is a figurative Artist. She is a first generation Chicana to graduate with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts along with a minor in Printmaking at California State University of Long Beach, 2022.
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Daniela Garcia Hamilton (b.1995) is a first generation Mexican-American painter. Her work revisits the rituals and traditions she experienced as a child of immigrant parents. Color and pattern is integrated throughout her work as she describes the vibrancy of her cultural traditions through portraits of her family members. Settings are fabricated to draw attention to shifts in immigration policies, each shift in color for the backgrounds represents the color her family home in Guanajuato was painted, at the time of the policy change. Contemporary American tile patterns are used as the veil through which she remembers these events. As she went through her higher education at CSULB, she began to reflect on her traditions through the American lens. She received her BFA in Drawing and Painting from CSULB in 2018, shortly after she received her Teaching Credential from there as well. She currently works full time as a High School Art teacher in Thousand Oaks. Her work has been exhibited throughout the California Coast, with galleries such as Artbug Gallery, TAG Gallery, Luna Anais Gallery, Artshare LA and the Irvine Fine Arts Center.
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Eduardo Viramontes is an Art Director, illustrator, and lettering artist based in Southern California. Driven by the hum of Los Angeles’ artistic atmosphere, Their practice as a painter and visual artist explores their roots as a Mexican-American in Los Angeles and stems from memories – both the vibrancy of their culture and the challenges within the migrant community. Eduardo’s work aims to uplift the hidden stories of the city.
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Eloise is a mixed-media artist who uses illustration to express the world inside her head. A graduate from Otis College of Art and Design, she specializes in printmaking and traditional illustrative media.
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I’m a painter currently residing in Anaheim California. My work is defined by bold and bright colors and illustrative images that are inspired by nostalgic cartoons and geometric shapes and patterns. My paintings as of late have been creating collages of images that usually represent the concept of the past, present and future all running parallel from each other and our relationship with time and our environment. Acrylic and ink are my preferred mediums of choice but I also enjoy working digitally with procreate and illustrator.
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Jacqueline Valenzuela (b. East Los Angeles, CA) received a BFA in Drawing and Painting from California States University Long Beach (2019). Her work has been exhibited throughout the greater Los Angeles area, including the South Gate Museum (South Gate), Brea Gallery (Brea), South Pasadena City Hall Gallery (Pasadena), The Mexican Center for Culture and Cinematic Arts of the Mexican Consulate (Los Angeles), ArtShare L.A. (Los Angeles), and most recently at Flatline Gallery (Long Beach) for, “Sitting on Chrome” an exhibition curated around the theme of exploring the different artists who have interconnected their art practices with their passion for lowriding.
Valenzuela is a multi-media artist whose practice is centered around her experiences as a woman within the Chicano world of lowriding. Her art practice reflects the deep roots she has planted in the lowrider community by bridging the gap between fine art and this underrepresented community
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Josh Vasquez is a first generation Salvadorian-American multi-disciplinary artist who primarily works in painting. He was born and raised in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles where he is currently based. His recent work features paintings that describe the Los Angeles landscape filtered through his personal lens. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis on drawing and painting from California State University of Long Beach in 2017. He has shown at Residency Gallery, Munzon Gallery (Formerly Flatline Gallery), the Torrance Art museum, and most recently MUZEO in Anaheim.
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Born and currently based in Los Angeles, Jynx Prado critiques and questions the natural and artificial elements within cultures, nature and human existence and the coexistence of them through an interdisciplinary practice with found objects, fabrics and their body. Through humor, irony and iconography Jynx describes their environment and social life as a queer Mexi-Salvi American. Their recent project Intimidating Intimacy, represented in a multimedia installation, was a recreated documentation of a video performance from a year prior that reflects and recontextualizes Jynx's intimidating, intimate moments with their past partners as a love letter to themself. The collection of works based in that project was recently exhibited and Jynx is currently continuing in the growing project within the queer community. Jynx graduated from OTIS College of Art and Design with their Master of Fine Arts + Emphasis in Social Practice degree in 2020, and received their BFA at California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2018.
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Karina Vazquez, b. 1990, is a Mexican born illustrator and muralist residing in Long Beach CA. She creates feminine figures portrayed in states of contemplation, hope, determination, sadness, and strength. Clues to her culture and experiences as an immigrant comprise her work in recent years. With the use of delicate graphite shading, loose painterly marks, a subdued color palette, and expressive qualities, she hopes to invoke a sense of tranquility to her viewers. Vazquez has shown in various local group exhibitions and has also worked on several public art projects that can be seen throughout a number of cities in Southern California. She was part of the line Up for Long Beach Walls 2022 where she painted the Dana Branch library. See @sleepy.day.dreams on Instagram for more.
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My name is Michael The Khoi Tran.
I'm a Vietnamese artist who identifies as Gay and Asexual. My body of work navigates around different forms of isolation and yearning for love. My work is inspired by patterns and repetition like being stuck in a vicious cycle of thoughts. I find myself thinking of the love I might experience, and going from hopeful to hopeless. My self portraits are characters with a bold presence like a cowboy or an ox. These characters help me cope with these vicious cycles of thoughts by giving me a false sense of control. There are times when a person is most vulnerable when they are open, but my work focuses on vulnerability when I am selfishly protecting and isolating my most innocent thoughts of love.
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Luis Zavala Tapia is a Mexican-born artist based in Long Beach. He holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2007) and a BFA in painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004).
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Working from observation is key for my art making process. Spending time to pause and transcribe what is before my eyes in a fast-paced world is challenging and captivating. It is the interaction with my surroundings that both motivates me to investigate and intimidates me at the same time. An enormous part of my process is obsession; the overwhelming lingering sensation I crave to fulfill when creating my images. The approach to painting is always passages of alla prima wet into wet paint. Obsessed with both the action of painting as well as how one can pronounce the beauty of isolation within mundane spaces. Whether it be specific to color, composition or the space itself. A reoccurrence of eerie memories, feelings, and mood are what fuels this current series.
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Since Nia could remember she was always an artistic person, and she was often criticized for being “different.” This caused Nia to channel her disdain for being set apart through her artwork. Soon enough, when people began to pay attention to and go as far as to say that her art- that was a means for her to cope with her depression- resonated with them, it allowed Nia to understand that her ability to instill empathy in her viewers was something powerful, a power that she knew was not given to her for the sake of vanity.
Nia’s areas of focus are narrated through portraits of both herself and select people of color in various settings to exemplify the complex Black experience. Typically the scenery will be vibrant yet serene allowing the audience to experience a euphoric feeling, while coming to terms with a heavy topic.
Nia also has formal training from a Fine Arts program she attended at Fort Hayes High School in Columbus, Ohio for two years. Alongside classes at El Camino Community College. Nia expresses herself by using materials such as oil paint, acrylic paint and canvas to display richness, texture and depths.
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Originally from Indio, Sean Kirkland, 34, has lived in Brooklyn and Phoenix, and worked as an installer at the Long Beach Museum of Art and Laguna Art Museum. As an installer, he was able to connect and grow with other artists and refine his artistic process; developing his oil paintings and current collage style.
“His art draws attention to what so many Americans find it difficult to confront; the carnage of this nation’s upbringing.” (The Hi Lo, Asia Morris)
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Although a native to Los Angeles, Sergio received his BFA from the University of Idaho in 2003 while playing collegiate football. Upon graduating, he began exhibiting work along side Mexican artists like Rufino Tamayo, Vladimir Cora, and Esau Andrade with the Latin Art Brokers Gallery in East Los Angeles. Since then, he has continued to exhibit his works in solo and group exhibitions, and has created commissioned works for various clients ranging from SHEIN, Miramax, Red Bull, Neiman Marcus, ESPN, Sprite, Netflix, MLB, AMIRI, US Bank, Chevrolet, Lysol, NHL, and NFL.
His most recent stretch of work has consisted of creating over 100 murals in various locations in Southern California including Long Beach, Los Angeles, Chino, Palm Springs, San Diego, Rampart Village, El Sereno, Compton, Nickerson Gardens, Downey, Boyle Heights, El Monte, and Whittier.
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Suni Mullen(b. 1994) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She is studying Fine Arts at Otis College of Art and Design (BFA, ‘23). As a commitment to consistently critically think, her practice as a painter, writer, and digital amplifier articulates her curiosity to create works that encapsulate rebellion, sarcasm, and seriousness-- through visual and linguistic explorations.
Mullen is the recipient of the Duff Family Scholarship, Otis Presidential Scholarship, and MAF LA Young Creatives Grant. In 2019, Mullen curated her first solo exhibition at Stay Gallery in Downey, California. She then exhibited twice with Innerspace Gallery in Downtown Los Angeles. Her work is a part of private collections in Boston, Massachusetts, New York, New York, and Dallas, Texas. In November 2019, Post & Beam invited her to exhibit six unique works to represent a cultural perspective of Los Angeles. In 2021, Mullen showcased works with SoLA Contemporary Art Museum for their virtual pandemic fundraiser. Her short film, "This New Mix Called, " "," premiered at Thuh Film Festival's first annual film festival in Long Beach, CA. Recently, her work has appeared on Bel-Air, Season 1, Episode 6, and in the film, Roux's Blues.
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Tamara Ramos is a contemporary artist based in Los Angeles and a graduate of Otis college of art and design where she majored in Illustration. Tamara's work focuses on using elements of design and vibrant colors to adorn her female characters which are consistent in a lot of her paintings. A lot of her work touch on themes relating to personal struggles, reflections of self, and mental health. Tamara has many avenues of inspiration some include writing poetry, music, and other artists that share similar themes and sensibilities.