Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, “.40 Living the Dream”, 2015.
Radamés “Juni” Figueroa makes work that is classic lowbrow meets highbrow, and it works so, so well. Random garbage and things thrown out of foreclosed homes become art. In his solo exhibition Rompiendo en Frío at ltd los angeles, Figueroa incorporates objects such as used air conditioners, bottle tops, a gate that lost its house, some street graffiti cut out from its original wall, and a pizza printed onto a piece of plastic. The only objects that look “purchased as new” are a basketball that’s locked into a chain link hoop using a Masterlock to keep the ball from ever falling through. The site-specificity of an imagined alleyway is recreated inside the gallery, inevitably asking viewers to consider the objects, now aestheticized, as detached from their original location. In other words: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
What separates Figueroa from the many artists using found materials in their work is that he’s working from the street, not the safeness of a thrift store. When someone donates their stuff to a thrift store, it’s because they believe that it still has some use value. Dropping off any used objects at a thrift, secondhand, or vintage store says that this will one day have a new owner. Leaving something out on the street doesn’t make that suggestion; it is literally saying that this is now garbage meant for no one. In the case of Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, practically everything in this show has street cred, but it’s not necessarily stuff that people left out for others to take. We viewers are left to gaze at the objects on the walls as prized or strange.
