A enjoyable reality: Ozzie Juarez is a former scenic painter “specializing in bodily simulation at Disneyland.” As a lot as that is an fascinating a part of the artist’s development and profession, it is also a captivating and key to understanding Hollywood as each a literal and figurative backdrop to the artwork world in LA and creating methods of seeing the world by a selected lens. The story goes that “Juarez entertained himself on the job by considering the colonial histories of American animation and by observing how shared experiences are constructed—the right parallel to Juarez’s ongoing analysis into surviving and destroyed Mexica (Aztec) tradition.”

The result’s that Juarez has created a physique of labor, particularly Por Debajo, on view new at Ochi in LA, that has hints of his skilled previous however looks like a contemporary interpretation of layering artwork historical past with a recent aesthetic. As a substitute of the sheen of Disneyland and the pre-concocted, perfected units of the movie business, Juarez has taken apinted camper shells, storefront awnings, and development supplies and painted clear patterns which might be a part of his fluorescent Mexica aesthetic. There’s a duality within the work that’s each a part of the artist’s life as a local Angelino and all of the histories of this distinctive place and his personal deeper autobiography. —Evan Pricco