Los Angeles artist Jaime Muñoz addresses complexities of Mexican American identity, engaging with themes such as the commodification of labor, religion, industry, technology, colonialism, and migration. Muñoz’s distinct aesthetic draws from broad inspirations ranging from his personal background working in construction and graphic design to examining Baroque art in Latin America. Decorative flourishes such as velvet flocking, applied paper, glitter, and impasto come together with crisply rendered iconography focusing on the nexus of mechanization and American labor. Muñoz’s images operate in a patchwork fashion, drawing throughlines between the unmistakable visual vocabulary of Southern California life (think vibrant ombrés, polychrome signage, and West Coast automobilia) and the visual language of popular culture and labor history.
Jaime Muñoz (b. 1989, Los Angeles, CA) received a BA in Fine Art from the University of California Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, New York (2023); and The Pit, Los Angeles (2022). His work was included in group presentations at the Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA (2022); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS (2021); Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY (2021); Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2024, 2021, 2019); The Pit, Los Angeles (2021, 2019); Maki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2020); Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA (2018); MAK Center for the Arts, Los Angeles (2017) and the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria (2017). A survey of Muñoz’s work, Truth Is A Moving Target is currently on view in Los Angeles at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. Muñoz lives and works in Pomona, CA.