SURFACE TREATMENT: 'Exiles' by Izel Vargas

In “Exiles,” currently on display at the STC Art Gallery, Izel Vargas reveals the synergetic nature of the US-Mexico border society. His own history is woven into imagery informed by border culture fragmentation, immigration issues, and displacement.

At first glance one may perceive a sense of whimsy in some of these works, but further reflection reveals a darker view. Memories appear like images on a TV screen, almost incoherently blending into one another. His painting, Love in the Time of Swine Flu, riffs off the nostalgic novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It unifies a potentially unifying sickness, memories of childhood comics, and a man seeking freedom. A black, depressing, background charges these images.

“I’m one of those people who tend to collect papers or interesting clippings,” said Vargas about his process. “This might be hereditary; my grandfather is a pack rat. He collects things and can’t throw them away. I’m very much like that with my imagery, so it comes from everywhere. A lot of the imagery that I have in this show I’ve had for five or six years.”

Vargas embraces this concept of recycled images. His collaged images mingle with his own painted images to create pseudo-surrealistic visual statements. Purgatorio combines several collected images. The dental tooth appears as a friendly, yet damaged persona, facing a set of clipped-out parents from a 1950s ad.

“Growing up I had a lot of dental surgery,” explained Vargas. “I had a baseball accident that was very traumatic when I was 11. It left me looking like that tooth. It was a traumatic part of my life; it’s probably a self portrait without thinking about it that way.”

In other works the tooth evolves into a grimmer significance; it appears dead in several works. It is perceived as a remnant of death. ID cards or dental records may be the only means of identification in the murders in Juarez, the drowning in the Rio Grande Valley, or the deaths of people in the deserts. “So this little dude has taken on a new meanings for me,” says Vargas.

A Handle on the Past shows the dead tooth balanced on the word, ‘hielo.’ As ‘ice’ its meaning becomes more universal to the artist than a source of tooth pain. He plays it off the acronym ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). “Whenever I read articles of overnight deportations or raids here in the South, the reports start off with ICE raided this or that. So I like to dub the Spanish word for it,” he adds.

Originally from Alamo, Vargas now lives in Nashville. “Exiles exist in immigrant communities that have popped up. The people are here because of the political or financial situations in which they lived,” explained the artist, “including my own self exile here, away from what I know and love.”

Nancy Moyer, PhD, is the art critic for The Monitor. She may be reached at [ mailto:nmoyer@rgv.rr.com ]nmoyer@rgv.rr.com