Artist: Mario Ayala
Exhibition title: Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong
Venue: Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
Date: December 12, 2019 – January 4, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala was born in 1991 in Los Angeles. He graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2014 where he received the Yale Norfolk fellowship in 2012. He was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2014.
Painting in acrylic using an airbrush, Ayala works with and through vernacular modes of cultural expression, materials, and imagery, reconfiguring them to present a distinctly visual lexicon in which elements contradict one another narratively and spatially. Ayala pays particular attention to spaces and mediums associated with the representation of brownness and Latinx identity. The techniques and symbology seen in the signage and advertising of Los Angeles’s landscape, and the applied arts employed in auto customization and Lowrider / tattoo subcultures appear, recontextualized, in Ayala’s canvases as he investigates the practical and social roles they play culturally, politically, and historically.
Ayala’s work has been exhibited at Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco; Loyal, Stockholm; SADE Gallery, Los Angeles; Stems Gallery, Brussels.
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Shooby doo Lang doo lang dong, 2019, exhibition view, Stems Gallery, Brussels
Mario Ayala, Content Administrator, Acrylic on canvas, 2019, 106.7 x 91.4 cm – 41 x 36 inches
Mario Ayala, Sign Language, Acrylic on canvas, 2019, 162.6 x 121.9 cm – 64 x 48 inches
Mario Ayala, Registered Noun, Acrylic on canvas, 2019, 116.8 x 127.0 cm – 46 x 50 inches
Mario Ayala, Recreational Masochism, Acrylic on canvas, 2019, 162.6 x 121.9 cm – 64 x 48 inches
Mario Ayala, Love Letter, Acrylic on canvas, 2019, 183.0 x 157.0 cm – 72 x 61 inches
