Exhibition - Erick Medel: Vidas

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present Erick Medel: Vidas, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. Erick Medel creates intimate portraits of immigrant life using a sewing machine and thread much like one would use a paintbrush and oils. His canvas is deep blue heavyweight denim, which provides a dark ground that sets off the brightly colored threads that are his chosen medium. Medel draws inspiration from the vibrant Boyle Heights neighborhood outside of his studio, capturing street festivals, sidewalk scenes, and quiet moments in works that tenderly celebrate the joys of a thriving immigrant community.

The works in Vidas offer the viewer windows into the lives that make up the artist’s community. He finds beauty in everyday expressions of pride and care, whether it is a quietly held hand, an artfully arranged bouquet, or a raucous block party. Medel’s thread on denim technique lends itself to these neighborhood scenes, evoking both the hazy atmosphere of Los Angeles and the staticy vibrance of quickly-glimpsed snapshots, lending each composition the feel of a technicolor memory. Each work also holds personal significance, stemming from scenes encountered in life and rendered in rich, brushstroke-like stitches that celebrate the history and present of immigrant life and labor in Los Angeles.

The largest work in the exhibition, Sonidero Night, captures the vibrant, celebratory energy of music bringing people together. In a composition reminiscent of the mid-century dance halls in the paintings of Earnie Barnes, Medel focuses on the movement of the dancers as the dramatic lighting from the stage sets the figures glowing. Sonidero nights unite young and old in joyful leisure, creating a link between different generations of immigrants. Elsewhere in the exhibition, Medel celebrates the hustle of immigrant life. Street vendors push fruit carts or tote Mother’s Day bouquets, carving out a living in the chaos of the city. A series of floral still lifes honor the vendors of LA’s flower district, standing in as portraits of individuals seen through the products of their labor. These works in particular highlight the nuance that Medel achieves in thread, his delicate linework conveying shadow and light that create subtle shifts of vibrant color.

Based in Los Angeles, Erick Medel was born in Puebla, Mexico in 1992. He holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Embroidering denim with an industrial sewing machine, Medel’s works touch on everyday life in Los Angeles, particularly those living and working in Boyle Heights and the city’s East Side. The painstaking craft of his embroidery is slow and meticulous, a compliment to the snapshot-like scenes it depicts. Equal parts documentarian and synthesizer, Medel strings together his own experiences as well as those of his family and his community into stitched scenes of vibrant color, tactile textures, and labored surfaces which convey his strong sense of identification with and care for his environment.