Carlos Almaraz-Playing With Fire
The Erotic Art of Carlos Almaraz Sizzles at LACMA
The idiom, “playing with fire” implies the kind of wild recklessness that can only be fueled by sexual desire, power, or money. In the case of the late Carlos Almaraz and his artwork, all three support his hypnotic point of view. In Playing With Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz, a show of erotic and volatile pieces at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the sexual side of the artist’s life heat up every inch of space.
“Almaraz was legendary during his lifetime, initially as a political activist in Los Angeles in the 1970s through his work with the United Farm Workers, painting banners for union rallies,” according to a statement by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which is hosting the exhibition. “Among his most visible works from this period were a number of public murals in East Los Angeles that depicted the Chicano civil rights struggle.”
The show depicts his transition in the early eighties, as the zeitgeist shifted into something more daring and provocative. Almaraz’s Los Angeles writhes like tongues of flame caught between too many tempting legs. Many of his works are in arid pastel, yet the saturated hues convey anything but dryness. He explores danger, mortality and arousal through his work, and shines a Red District light on somber scenes of house fires and car collisions. Naked men wrestle for the sheer joy of skin-to-skin contact in one moment, and crimson devils dance in the next.
We invite you to come close to Almaraz’s Fire in the images below – may you enjoy its heat and never get burned.
