Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art CSU San Bernardino

Linda Vallejo: Brown Baroque, Objects of Opulence

Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art, CSU San Bernardino,  San Bernardino, CA

August 26 – December 16, 2023

sponsored through the generous support of the AltaMed Health Services

Merry Scully, RAFFMA Director and Curator

Linda Vallejo’s recent work combines her interest in popular culture, statistical demographics, Victorian aesthetics, and her Chicanx heritage in a new installation project titled Brown Baroque: Objects of Opulence. For decades, the artist has used her talent, factual information, and references to popular culture to create disparate juxtapositions that can foster questions, prompt conclusions, and call to action. Social and cultural issues like color, class, privilege, visibility, and belonging are addressed from her perspective as a Chicana artist.

“Brown Baroque: Objects of Opulence” began with researching the Gilded Age and her reflection upon questions like “Where were the Latinos in the 1900s? What was their place in the building of the nation?
Are Latinos integral to the fabric of the American culture and economy? What is the Data Today?” She poses these questions and elicits others in a series of parlor settings, dioramas, works on paper, and sculptural objects.

Life’s a Bowl of Cherries, 2022. Punch bowl, artificial cherries, acrylic enamel

The Brown Baroque: Objects of Opulence installation project is presented in RAFFMA Mueller Gallery and include over fifty works including full installation project scenarios accompanied by individual works on paper and sculpture. The gallery is 33.4’ x 14.8’ (560 sq. ft).

The exhibition is accompanied by a full color catalogue with scholarly essays by Laura Augusta, curator for the Stanlee & Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, University of Texas at El Paso, Charlene Villaseñor Black, UCLA professor of Chicana/o Studies and Associate Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), Shana Nys Dambrot, art critic, curator, author, and LA Weekly Arts Editor, and over 20 plates, artist statement, bio and selected resume.