Jerry Peña

You Ain’t Gotta Lie to Kick It

August 13th - September 18th, 2022

Le Maximum is thrilled to present You Ain’t Gotta Lie to Kick It, a solo exhibition of new works by Jerry Peña. This is Peña’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will run from August 13th to September 18th, 2022. A reception for the artist will be held Saturday, August 13th, 2022 from 6 pm to 10 pm. 

Jerry Peña creates artworks that are grounded in the visual and material realities of life in Los Angeles. The objects he assembles – a worn pair of checkered Vans, a work glove, crushed beer cans, broken hubcaps, smashed car windshields – are imbued with an unmistakable sense of place. They suggest real habits of making, scavenging, breaking, and fixing common to the working class Mexican American neighborhoods of Southeast Los Angeles where Peña was raised. The auto body shop, the neighborhood park, the concrete wall spiked with glass, and the truck stop diner are summoned as distinctive sources of grit and beauty. Regardless of their source, Peña’s surfaces are worn by the imprint of the real. 

And yet, these works are steeped in references to art history ranging from the allegorical assemblages of Robert Rauschenberg to the surreal image collages of Gorgio de Chirico. Peña uses these aesthetic devices to bring the viewer into his family histories and cultural obsessions. For instance, Papa Smurf Will Take Your Pink Slip Now arranges signs and objects taken from drag racing into a grid, creating weathered surfaces while blocking the sense of touch with a leather work glove. Other works create rough-hewn abstractions from chicken wire mesh and cement. Heavy concrete pours combine with delicate symbols such as a painted rose, or memory objects such as a family photograph framed in the shape of a heart. Blending the street and the studio, Peña elevates the DIY practices of Rasquachismo, Kustom Kulture, and on-the-fly solutions to practical problems otherwise known in Spanish slang as “un Mickey Mouse” while grounding art in memory and the persistence of the everyday. 

Jerry Peña (b. Los Angeles 1991) holds a Bachelor of Arts in Drawing and Painting from Cal State Long Beach. Recent exhibitions include Borrowed Time, Flat Line Gallery (Long Beach, CA, 2021) Off Alondra and Hickory, Maple Street Construct (Omaha, NE, 2021), and The Usual Suspects, Domicile (Los Angeles, CA, 2021).

Please contact art@lemaximumvenice.com for inquiries. 

Documentation by Ian Byers-Gamber