HUGO CROSTHWAITE

CARAVAN

January 14 – March 4, 2023

Hugo Crosthwaite
Manifest Destiny, 2023
acrylic and oil stick on canvas
72 x 144 in (182.9 x 365.8 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Manifest Destiny (Liberty), 2023
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
72 x 48 in (182.9 x 121.9 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Manifest Destiny (Guadaloupana), 2023
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
72 x 48 in (182.9 x 121.9 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Manifest Destiny (Desierto), 2023
Acrylic and oil stick on canvas
48 x 72 in (121.9 x 182.9 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
A Portrait of Beatrice Sarmiento Chavez, 2019.
Edition 1 of 5
Stop-motion drawing animated video; 03:14 minutes

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group (1-21), 2022-2023
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 1, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
5.75 - 6.5 inches tall (figurines)
56 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
62.5 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 2, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 7.5 inches tall (figurines)
56 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
63.5 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 3, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
60 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
68 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 10, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 13, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 16, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 18, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 19, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 20, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan Group No. 21, 2022
Suite of 5 ceramic figurines, wood pedestal, stop-motion animated video, 03:50 min.
6 - 8 inches tall (figurines)
58 x 12 x 12 inches (pedestal)
66 x 12 x 12 inches (overall)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Caravan, 2022
Stop-motion animated video
03:50 min.

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands No. 11, 2023.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands, No. 7, 2022.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands No. 4, 2022.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel 24 x 24 in (61 x 61 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands No. 6, 2023.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands No. 10, 2023.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands No. 5, 2023.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands, No. 8, 2022
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Hugo Crosthwaite
Borderlands No. 9, 2023.
Pencil, charcoal, and acrylic paint on mounted board on panel
24 x 24 x 1.75 in (61 x 61 x 4.45 cm)

Installation view of Hugo Crosthwaite, Caravan

Press Release

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce HUGO CROSTHWAITE: CARAVAN, an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures, and videos, on view in Gallery 2 and Gallery 3 from January 14 through March 4, 2023. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 21, from 4 to 7 pm.

Drawing from his own experiences as a citizen living on the U.S./Mexico-border, Hugo Crosthwaite has spent the past twenty years documenting the endless ebb and flow of humanity between Tijuana and San Diego. Each day, thousands of migrants and refugees trek across this great divide. With his sketchbook and camera in hand, Crosthwaite captures their portraits and personal stories while they stand in line or sit on a bus or park bench waiting to cross.

The works in Caravan speak to the harsh reality faced by migrants as they make the treacherous journey to the border in search of the American Dream. This is a reality that few of us have experienced personally, yet stories of the vulnerability, disenfranchisement, and violence faced at the southern border continue to make bold headlines every week while year after year political stump speeches stoke fear and prejudice.

As an installation, Caravan is comprised of a series of wooden pedestals, or towers, each holding five individually hand-crafted and hand-painted ceramic figurines resembling ancient Mayan idols onto which Crosthwaite has drawn migrants’ faces. It is installed in a meandering line that follows the contours of the border wall between San Diego-Tijuana, and is accompanied by a five-minute stop-motion drawing animation video. The video references the politicization of the term “caravan” as a way of dehumanizing these aliens. Crosthwaite’s haunting ceramic figurines re-center the migratory routes and the flesh of asylum-seekers in physicality and empathy.

In a new series of large-scale paintings on canvas titled Manifest Destiny the artist re-introduces the use of color in his work, last employed some twenty years ago. In these works, Crosthwaite takes inspiration from American Progress, the 1872 painting by John Gast that serves as an allegory for Manifest Destiny and American westward expansion. In three of the paintings a central female figure—Columbia, Lady Liberty, and the Virgin of Guadalupe—personifying the hopes and dreams of a future, lead migrants facing great adversity across the desert wilderness to an uncertain destiny.

A second series of smaller paintings, titled Borderlands, and rendered more typically in black and white with acrylic, ink and graphite on panel capture the eclectic architectural aesthetic of Tijuana in detail, contrasting its intimacy and chaos with idealized aspects of the migrants’ desired life beyond the border. These paintings, aspects of which are featured in the video, explore notions of the border and migration through a combination of figurative representation, abstraction, surrealism, and pop elements.

Also included in this exhibition, and marking its Los Angeles debut, is Crosthwaite’s stop-motion drawing animation, A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez, which was awarded First Prize in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2019. The video recounts the story of a young Mexican woman who ventured north across the border multiple times in search of the American Dream.

When Crosthwaite met Chávez during one of her many attempts, she embellished her story with elements of exaggeration, fantasy, and violence. "We are defined by the stories that we tell ourselves,’ he says, ‘either real or imagined, to deal with difficult situations in our lives. I have left the video open to interpretation just as Berenice left me with her vague and unsettling story." The repeated drawing and erasure in Sarmiento Chávez’ stop motion portrait can be seen to represent not only her story, but the U.S./México border itself—a constant reopening of a scar that wants to heal but can’t.

Hugo Crosthwaite was born 1971 in Tijuana and spent his formative years in Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico. An American citizen with family on both sides of the border, he graduated from San Diego State University in 1997 with a BA in Applied Arts. He was awarded First Prize in the 2019 Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition for his stop-motion animated video A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez, and subsequently the portrait commission for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, another stop-motion animation portrait that debuted recently at the NPG. In addition, he is also winner of the 2021 San Diego Art Prize, and the Grand Prize at the 2014 XI FEMSA Monterrey Biennial, MX.

Crosthwaite’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Morgan Library and Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; San Diego Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL; the National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; University of Arkansas Art Gallery, Little Rock, AK; FEMSA Collection, Mexico; CECUT/Centro Cultural Tijuana, Mexico; and private collections in the U.S. and around the world.

For further information, including images and previews, please call 213-395-0762, or email: gallery@luisdejesus.com.

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Press

ARTILLERY MAGAZINE

HUGO CROSTHWAITE LUIS DE JESUS LOS ANGELES March 7, 2023

A procession of wooden plinths hold aloft groups of idol-sized sculptures, stout bodies with the hallmarks of Mayan figurines, whose torsos sport schematic rib cages, hearts and organs, and are topped with faces rendered in a contemporary style—portraits of migrants and asylum-seekers at the US-Mexico border whom the artist regularly sketches while they wait to make the crossing. This is “Caravan,” a series of sculptures and a short stop-motion animation in which they star—the anchor of a new exhibition by Hugo Crosthwaite in which he continues his decades-long process of documenting the personal experiences and individual stories of the human beings who undertake this perilous journey.

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THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

ARTS & CULTURE NEWSLETTER: 'TITANTIC' RETURNS IN 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, BUT JUST AS DULL February 9, 2023

Tijuana-born artist Hugo Crosthwaite’s work combines portraiture, sketching, painting, ceramics, photography and animation to create dense and layered compositions. Working primarily in black and white, Crosthwaite brings characters from allegory and popular media to illustrate the human condition, interacting with the architecture of Tijuana and dreams of the border. His work often elevates the ordinary person to heroic levels showing the trials they endure while surviving in contemporary society.

View SanDiegoUnionTribune.com

FRIEZE

HUGO CROSTHWAITE ANIMATES DISILLUSION AND RESILIENCE AT THE US-MEXICO BORDER January 26, 2023

At Luis De Jesus, Los Angeles, the artist displays figurines, paintings and animations that draw on the physical, psychological and cultural landscapes of borderlands

Conceptually positioned in the borderlands between the United States and Mexico, ‘Hugo Crosthwaite: Caravan’ at Luis De Jesus deploys the languages of artistic and popular media to portray both the perils of the border and the humanity of those who must traverse it.

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LOS ANGELES TIMES

STARTING YOUR OWN ART COLLECTION? COREY HELFORD GALLERY IS HERE TO HELP January 25, 2023

This show, 20 years in the making, follows Hugo Crosthwaite, a Tijuana artist who draws from his experience as a citizen living on the Mexico–U.S. border, sharing what he observed of the landscape and politics. For his new exhibit “Caravan,” at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Crosthwaite spent days with a camera and sketchbook, capturing portraits and stories of the thousands of migrants and refugees trekking the border. The show includes paintings, sculptures and videos that are inspired by the stories he witnessed. This recommendation from The Times’ art and design columnist Carolina Miranda is currently open and runs until March 4.

View LATimes.com

LOS ANGELES TIMES

THE RAINBOW AFTER THE STORM: DANCE CAMERA WEST AND MORE EVENTS FOR YOUR RAIN-FREE WEEKEND January 18, 2023

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles opening reception for Mimi Smith and Hugo Crosthwaite’s solo exhibitions: The opening reception for the new solo exhibitions at the downtown Los Angeles gallery has been rescheduled from last Saturday to this Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m. While the exhibit itself is still available to view, you’ll have to wait a bit longer to celebrate the shows with fellow artists and art lovers. Details can be found on Luis De Jesus Los Angeles’ website.

View LATimes.com