BIO

Elmer Guevara is a Los Angeles native who currently lives and works in Los Angeles. A few years prior to his birth in 1990, his parents fled a war-torn El Salvador. With memories of fleeing the crossfire of the civil war in the mid-1980s, they immigrated to the United States and found their new home in the City of Angels.

From a young age, growing up in South Central along with the culture his parents brought from El Salvador, he found artistic inspiration in the city streets. Throughout his teenage years, he commuted on public transportation and by bicycle, out with friends and noticing social issues that took maturity to understand. Early on, urban art became an obsession being his earliest experience with painting. In 2017, he receives a BFA in Drawing and Painting from California State University Long Beach.

His involvement with the subject of inherited trauma and the challenges of visually expressing this psychological concept are a particular goal in the work. This drives him to expand the use of multiple depictive modes to show the complexity inherited in the subject matter. He configures figures with a variety of approaches, in some instance portions hold collaged graphic images and along with painterly modes that collide with one another. The images in the collaged areas derive from numerous family picture books and screen-shot images from video clips forming two distinct worlds. The collaged element within the body gives one version of information in one particular style that contrasts rendition painting and drier marks. An additional concern involves portraiture that evokes a sense of narrative within varied images. He manipulates the images reconstructing memories of the past and merging with his current experiences.

B. 1990
Lives and works in Los Angeles

2022 – Hunter College, MFA in Painting, New York City
2017 – California State University Long Beach, BFA Drawing and Painting, Long Beach, CA

Solo Exhibitions:
2022 – THE QUADS, M+B Doheny, Los Angeles, CA
2021 – Felix Art Fair Solo Presentation, M+B Gallery, Hollywood, CA. 2021 – Mi Orgullo, Residency Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2019 – Rumbo al Norte, Avenue 50 Studios, Los Angeles, CA

Selected Exhibitions:
2022 – Young Americans, PM/AM Gallery, London, UK
2022 – Part of the Scenery, Grove Collective, London, UK
2021 – A Very Anxious Feeling, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia
2021 – LA to Milan, F2T Gallery, Milan, Italy
2021 – The Privilege of Getting Together, Anna Zorina Gallery, New York, New York.
2021 – Post it Notes, UUU Art Collective, Rochester, NY.
2020 – Felix Art Fair Group Exhibition with Residency Gallery, Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, CA 2019 – Ganas de Existir, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA
2019 – Dos Cipotes, Arts & Recreation Center of Baldwin Park, Baldwin Park, CA.
2017 – Immaterial, Max L. Gatov Gallery West, CSULB, Long Beach, California