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'Always Lurking' Portrays Post-War Americana in Collages and Paintings

Trace Mendoza gives us a glimpse into the complicated and messy world Santa or God watches over.
Always Lurking, Trace Mendoza’s Santa-Inspired Nightmare. All works by Trace Mendoza, 2015.

“Santa Claus is fucking stalking you! And you’ve got to fight back!” is the motto LA artist Trace Mendoza uses to describe his first solo exhibit, Always Lurking, on view at the Daniel Rolnik Gallery in Santa Monica.

Fresh off the gallery’s summer feud with New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, Mendoza’s show promises a fresh heap of aggressive low-brow, everyman’s art that inspired Satlz’s ire with the gallery in the first place. Mendoza’s current crop of work is a rollicking ode to that creepy, bearded dude you might otherwise know as Santa Claus, the character cryptically described by the show’s title. Mendoza asks, “Is Santa Claus God? After all, (if) he knows when you’ve been bad or good, Santa Claus must always be present and watching you in the shadows and light, always lurking.” Though not always explicitly depicted in Mendoza’s images, it is implied that Santa is always watching, just like God.

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Mendoza gives us a glimpse into the complicated and messy world Santa or God watches over. Through a barrage of mixed-media cut outs, drawing, and painting, the images showcased in the show convey a psychotropic critique of post-World War II Americana with images of housewives, Lyndon B. Johnson, grotesque fat people, and businessmen discombobulated across scenes of confusion. All are presided over this all-seeing Claus. Mendoza utilizes this tableau to reflect autobiographical scenes and influences, translating the past in order to, as the artist states, “create a new narrative for the future by repetitively deconstructing the characters involved in my life.”

Mendoza, an illustrator and graduate of Laguna College of Art and Design, has been featured in a variety of publications like the Los Angeles Times and Juxtapoz and is currently chief among the many artists featured at Daniel Rolnik’s jam-packed, tiny gallery in Santa Monica.

Mendoza’s show, coincidentally, is closing out Rolnik’s Santa Monica location as the gallery relocates to somewhere in Hollywood. The Santa Monica space, with its guava-hued walls plastered with mismatched frames and trinkets is known around town as a down-to-earth, art palace of the people. The work on display, mostly collages, prints, paintings, and zines, span the range from personified phalluses doing random stuff to art brut-inspired portraits of Lana Del Rey and everything in between. But instead of being merely a play den for the “low-brow” elements of the Los Angeles art scene, the place actually serves as a marketplace for young artists who still haven’t made it. It’s a place reminiscent more of a used record store or anarchist coffee shop, where one goes for the experiences and conversations that arise out of consuming art, rather than merely to consume the art objects themselves.

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The gallery will have a booth at the upcoming LA Art Show January 27-31, where Rolnik and his crew of artists will be presenting a pop up “bakery” showcasing paintings and sculptures of various types of food. Go here to learn more about Rolnik’s gallery and his upcoming shows. To see more of Mendoza’s work, visit his website.

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