Chez Max et Dorothea is an arts nonprofit organization based in Seillans (France) and Los Angeles (USA). It's dedicated to preserving the legacy of Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning's final home and studios, which they designed in the south of France. Currently on view at Max et Dorothea is the survey exhibition “Daniela Gallois and Benjamín Serrano”. The goal of the show is to draw broader recognition to these extraordinary artists who lived and worked for most of their lives in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. It features a diverse selection of paintings, sculptures, and mixed media pieces. In this video, the co-curator of the exhibition, Jacinto Astiazarán, talks about the exhibition space and the current show. Daniela Gallois and Benjamín Serrano is on view until Sunday, November, 24th.
Daniela Gallois and Benjamín Serrano / Chez Max et Dorothea Los Angeles. October 25, 2024.
Daniela Gallois and Benjamín Serrano / Chez Max et Dorothea Los Angeles. October 25, 2024.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Show me the works.
00:27I'll give you a sound tour.
00:30We are in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, first of all, at the galleries of Chez Max and Dorothea.
00:42Chez Max and Dorothea is a non-profit foundation based here in LA and in Seillon, southern France.
00:48It's named after the surrealist artists Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.
00:53The mission of the foundation is to recover the house that they built in the south of France
00:58and turn it into an artist residency research center promoting surrealism and contemporary art.
01:05The house that Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning built is in the south of France in Seillon.
01:10Here in Los Angeles, we have basically an outpost of the foundation to promote the foundation
01:17and to have this gallery space, exhibition space, to promote contemporary artists and as it connects to surrealism.
01:27I co-curated this current exhibition with Bridget Nicole Grice, the director of Chez Max and Dorothea,
01:34so I'm only involved with this particular exhibition.
01:38This exhibition is called Daniela Galois and Benjamin Serrano.
01:44Serrano and Galois were both artists who lived in Tijuana, the border town in north of Mexico, not very far from here,
01:52and they both lived and worked there for their entire lives.
01:56In 1966, Serrano found himself studying in Paris, studying fine art, which is where he met Daniela Galois.
02:04Daniela was born in France, she was French.
02:06They fell in love, she flew to meet him in Tijuana, and the rest is history.
02:11So they were together for some time, eventually they divorced, they separated,
02:16but they stayed close and stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
02:20Daniela never went back to France, she stayed in Tijuana, lived there for the rest of her life,
02:25painting and living there.
02:27So although the artists exhibited during their time,
02:31Serrano certainly reached a little bit more of an exposure in terms of his career in the art world,
02:37Galois a little bit less so.
02:40But the goal of this exhibition is to really highlight their work,
02:44bring it to a broader audience in contemporary art that it hasn't had before.
02:51If you live in Tijuana or San Diego, that border region, they're well known enough there,
02:57but really in other art centers like Mexico City or here in the U.S., their work is not very known.
03:03So one of the main goals of this exhibition is to promote their work, bring it to a broader audience,
03:09and really give it the place that I think it deserves in contemporary art and its ties to 20th century modernism
03:16and postmodern art as well.
03:18Because their work kind of bridges the gap, I think, between modernism, pop art, postmodern work.
03:27They really kind of hybridized a lot of different references in terms of medieval iconography,
03:34in terms of Galois, because she was French and she was influenced by European art.
03:39In terms of Serrano, his references to Mexican folkloric art are really strong.
03:44But they really synchronized all these different references to create this super unique, I think,
03:48very idiosyncratic work that I think could have only happened in a place like Tijuana.
03:53I think there's a reason they never left Tijuana, even though they traveled,
03:57and Serrano was educated in Europe and other parts of Mexico in his art education.
04:04But I think Tijuana always lured them back, or lured him back, and Galois stayed there for the rest of her life.
04:10It wasn't necessarily the best place for them to live, to promote themselves in their career as artists,
04:17but I think as artists it was a very influential and inspirational place to be.
04:24So Tijuana, I think, as a place, is very in the subtext of all of this work for them.
04:31For the curation, I spent a long time meeting with different collectors who own all of this work.
04:38All of this work was really owned by collectors who were either family or close friends of both artists.
04:45And it was a really amazing adventure for me to go through this research process.
04:52I grew up in Tijuana, that's where I'm from, so I was already familiar with these artists.
04:55So I was super excited to bring them to L.A. and have other people enjoy the work as well.
05:02We have one big sculpture here, one big polychrome wood sculpture by Serrano.
05:06He made a lot of wood sculpture in his time.
05:10We have an old carousel slide projector showing some documentation of some of his sculptural work,
05:17but we do have just this one wonderful big wood sculpture by him.
05:22Galois made some sculpture, mostly painting.
05:26I'm pretty happy, I think, with the selection in terms of Galois' work,
05:29because it shows a broad range of her time period and her styles.
05:33She was really, really prolific.
05:35I mean, the friends, family I've talked to about her, she was painting all the time.
05:41She was drinking and painting, drinking and painting.
05:44They both, unfortunately, suffered from pretty debilitating addiction to alcohol.
05:50Serrano only lived to be 49 because of it.
05:55She lived into her 60s, but it was definitely, it was their companion, unfortunately, for their entire lives.
06:04Galois' work is really spread all over Tijuana and San Diego.
06:08She was an icon of Tijuana at the time, I think.
06:13People would see her walking down the streets.
06:15She would be carrying her paintings, her drawings, going kind of door to door, selling her work.
06:20She would literally walk into people's offices or storefronts to sell her work, and everyone knew her.
06:27She was really beloved and well-loved and liked.
06:31For this reason, there's work by Daniela Galois all over Tijuana and San Diego.
06:36I kept knocking on doors in my research process and finding more and more work as I went along.
06:42It was like playing whack-a-mole.
06:44The more I looked, the more I found.
06:47But I'm really happy with the selection.
06:48I think it shows a good range of her work, her different styles, her themes.
06:53And Serrano as well.
06:54There's a little bit less selection of his.
06:56His work is a little bit harder to come by.
06:58He lived a shorter life.
07:01Even though he did produce a lot, it's harder to find his work and bring it.
07:08But I think we have a good selection of Serrano's work as well in terms of showing his art practice,
07:14his variety of styles and mediums and topics.
07:18The goal was to bring them together.
07:22They did show together during their time when they were alive.
07:25They even collaborated a little bit.
07:26They made some sculpture work together.
07:29But in a somewhat romantic sense, we wanted to bring them together and show them together as artists and as people.
07:39There's a nice tie to the foundation itself because the foundation is named after Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning,
07:45who were a surrealist couple.
07:47We thought it would be a nice gesture to bring them here to this space and to this foundation.