Mayolo Figueroa

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CV

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Recent Exhibition:

October 19 - November 23, 2024.

limina, lumina,,

Lindsey Harald-Wong, Narong Tintamusik, Catherine Menard, Daniel Schubert, October Anderson, Mayolo Figueroa, Kento Saisho

Location: Reisig and Taylor Contemporary (4478 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, 90016).

Type: Group Exhibition.

Documentation:

+ Checklist.

Release:

+ File.

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Bio

Mayolo Figueroa (b. 2002) is an artist from El Monte, California. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Otis College of Art and Design and lives and works out of Los Angeles. He has a multidisciplinary practice that mainly focuses on photography but also utilizes sound and found objects to explore his relationships with land and family. He investigates what it means for someone or something to belong in a certain place or time, whether in nature or with one another. He has recently been working with the San Gabriel River to explore how climate change and urban development have significantly impacted this river's ecology and how by being at the margin, ecologically liminal places like this are often forgotten about or pushed aside.

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A note on Everything The Light Touches…. [November 2024\ limina, lumina,, ]

Taken not too far from his family home in the San Gabriel Valley, this surroundingly scaled photograph documents the area’s namesake river (at night). The San Gabriel River is the central, or middle, of the three main rivers running throughout the sprawls of Los Angeles, accompanied by the Los Angeles River and the Santa Ana River. The river itself extends about 58 miles, with the run of its watershed extending from the Angeles National Forest—with the largest headwater at the East Fork, located at the crest of the San Gabriel Mountains—to its mouth between Alamitos Bay and Anaheim Bay. The portion of the river running along the southern riprap roughly defines the border between Los Angeles County (at Long Beach) and Orange County. 

Crossing several distinct natural, residential, and industrial (eco)systems, the river’s geographical and biological track reveals antagonistic forces of extraction, development, and conservation simultaneously operating on the body of water. Maybe this reflects something the city’s double-bound demeanor. And so does its colonial history: the upper river—now used mostly for recreation—has been industrially purposed since the 1860s, beginning with gold mining (and continues with the extraction of its gravel bed for construction purposes since the 1900s). Earlier, the lower river was the site of the construction of the Misión de San Gabriel Arcángel, which was built and run with the slave labor of the indigenous Tongva population.

During the opening reception for the exhibition I asked Mayolo’s father about growing-up in the SGV. He said, for him, “it’s like the center of the universe.”

This photograph is difficult to see. But so is the night. (Or anything “at” night.) And so is any river in LA. I really need to look, and still I’m cracked with glimpses framed by industrial veins and urban debris. Or by the grid of the gallery wall’s exposed framing. Look here: power lines (or 2 x 4s) appear almost comfortable against the glare of the night. Against everything the night touches….

Unavoidably captured in the glossy reflection of the print—tilting forward enough that it towers over me in my approach—I am forced to see myself as part of the landscape. As an active agent, even if I am only looking. I run along the borders to find the light, or I find myself no longer fearing the lack of day. (Maybe I even take-out my phone and use the flashlight to get a closer look, as people often have in the gallery.) A test of my own limits against the hollows of the night.

(See, California State Waterboard.)

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Exhibitions with the Gallery: