More on the Sydney Biennale

As Scott Andrews noted on PHXated the other day, a contingent of Arizonans will be at the biennale in Sydney beginning this weekend, including artists Angela Ellsworth and Claudio Dicochea. Also there will be their gallery owner, Lisa Sette; her husband, designer Peter Shikany; Dicochea’s wife, Adriana Gallego; writer and performer Tania Katan, and journalist Deborah Sussman Susser.

One of Dicochea’s works in the show grace one of the event publicity posters up around Sydney:

Dicochea and Gallego’s work can be seen here; Ellsworth’s here.

PHXations—Thursday, March 4

Artist Claudio Dicochea’s long-awaited opening is tonight at Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale from 7 to 9. In previous work Dicochea puts a genre of formal Spanish portrait painting through a series of conceptual rethinkings. A set of six of his paintings were to me the highlight of the Phoenix Art Museum’s Locals Only show last year.

Here’s Hearsight’s Scott Andrews on his work:

His painting today continues in a hybrid mode, with Disney characters and Norteño balladeers cohabiting in a Pop-Abstract world of high-low art. Drawing and cartoon transfers are placed on the sheet like collectible toys on a shelf, but don’t confuse these tableaux with facile repetition. Encoded within the play of all- too-familiar stereotypes and candy colors are not only the artist’s childhood memories but a meditation on art’s culpability in the construction of racial classification, a process that ran in tandem with the mixing of peoples after 1492.

A selection of Dicochea’s work, and that of his wife, Adriana Gallega, can be seen here. Details on the show and how to get to it here.