As part of the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibitions throughout Los Angeles, Coagula Curatorial Gallery in Chinatown, Los Angeles presents Nervously Engendered: The Art of Gerardo Velasquez. The late Gerardo Velazquez was one of East L.A.’s first Chicanos to embrace punk rock. His band, Nervous Gender, combined avant-garde approaches to noise making with the innovations of the gestating punk rock sound and scene.
Nervously Engendered documents how the band’s aesthetic pioneered by Velazquez shaped how the culture at large sees queer, ethnic, and alternative “outsiders.” In addition to his radical work on stage, his recordings, and his own self as a transformative work of art, Velazquez shaped the look of his band as an art project. In the 1980s, he continued to work as an artist, assembling a provocative oeuvre that included forays into computer-based media. He tirelessly established and embodied the edge of cultural production past which few, if any, artists have treaded. Most West Coast experimental movements share a synergy with this relatively unknown yet radically influential figure. The show opens September 2, 2017.
Gerardo Velazquez will also be featured in two additional PST: LA/LA shows, Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., opening September 9, 2017 at MOCA Pacific Design Center; and Harry Gamboa, Jr.: Chicano Male Unbonded, opening September 16, 2017 at The Autry Museum.
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