Brownsville-based artist has newest popup solo exhibition at Olvera Building

Push and pull is the idea that we have this border culture where we have the Mexican side and the American side. Between these two, there’s this constant push and pull of the cultures and the languages, the English and Spanish, coming in with each other.

Walking through “Push & Pull,” Brownsville-based artist Cande Aguilar’s newest popup solo exhibition at the Olvera Building in Brownsville’s Market Square, is a little like the feeling of discovering a secret room in the family home, filled with items referencing people in your life but in ways you’ve never seen them before.

The bright colors of the artist’s signature style, which he calls Barrio Pop, meld with a mixture of paintings, readymade and commissioned sculptures, signage and television screens laid out against the stark brickwork of the restored 19th-century building.

Fragments of looping script — in English and Spanish — decorate canvases as cartoonish figures and transfers peep out under and over layers of paint and mark-making. In the center of the room, on a circle of masonry, a family made of mufflers and other auto parts are visible from every corner, haloed in light from above.

The exhibition “Push & Pull”, opened to the public Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Olvera Building, located at 1115 E Washington St. The exhibition will be available by appointment through Galeria 1204 until May 7.

Being in the space feels like being and moving through Brownsville in a visual shorthand unique to the area.

The exhibition, created over two years, features 26 pieces curated by Galeria 1204, a digital gallery run by Lorena Ramos that showcases Mexican and Mexican-American artists through popups and online exhibitions throughout the United States and Mexico.

“I think Cande has done amazing work in grabbing and abstracting our identity and putting it into his artwork,” Ramos said of the exhibition.

In his work, Aguilar draws from the hand-painted signs and advertisements of his childhood but abstracts or re-presents them in new ways that he feels embody or magnify the distinct iconography and artistic aesthetics of the Valley.

Growing up in Brownsville, he says, there were no art museums or galleries, but there were always hand-painted signs and art around local stores.

I think Cande has done amazing work in grabbing and abstracting our identity and putting it into his artwork.

In titling his latest exhibition, Aguilar says it came about as he considered what it meant to grow up and create art along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Push and pull is the idea that we have this border culture where we have the Mexican side and the American side. Between these two, there’s this constant push and pull of the cultures and the languages, the English and Spanish, coming in with each other,” he said.

The exhibition “Push & Pull”, opened to the public Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Olvera Building, located at 1115 E Washington St. The exhibition will be available by appointment through Galeria 1204 until May 7.

For more information or to view the online exhibition catalog, visit www.galeria1204.com or their Instagram page at @galeria1204.