Show Preview | Four Wheelin’ Flashback

Santa Fe, NM
Manitou Galleries, May 1-31

This story was featured in the May 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art May 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

WHILE SOME people beyond the state’s borders may not be aware of it, “lowrider” culture thrives in northern New Mexico, where vintage sedans, convertibles, and pickups customized with modified suspensions and deluxe paint jobs cruise the streets and highways—especially in and around the town of Española, long known as the Lowrider Capital of the World. So, in anticipation of warmer days that are ideal for taking to the streets, the Palace Avenue location of Manitou Galleries in Santa Fe presents a group show called Four Wheelin’ Flashback, featuring works from six artists: Michael Baum, William Haskell, Colt Idol, Arthur Lopez, Tim Prythero, and Curtis Wade.

With all the artists planning to attend, the opening reception on Friday, May 1, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., promises a fully immersive lowrider experience. “We’ll have car-inspired hors d’oeuvres,” says the gallery’s associate director, Cyndi Hall, “and the famous jeweler and car aficionado Roger Wilbur will be there with two of his vehicles, a ’47 Ford Super Deluxe and a ’54 Buick Riviera.” Nashville singer-songwriter Lani Nash provides the entertainment, and perhaps she’ll even sing her appropriately titled hit, “I’ll Drink, You Drive.”

Classic vehicles, meanwhile, proudly stand front and center in the approximately 20 works on view, including vivid expressionistic landscapes from Haskell, Baum’s realistic depictions of wide-open spaces and boundless skies, romantic scenes of the west by Idol, and Prythero’s uncannily lifelike miniature sculptures.

Lopez, a contemporary santero who carves and paints wooden images of sacred figures, brings a witty yet still reverent twist to religious iconography in works like JESUS ON THE CRUZ, one of a series of pieces in which he places the bearded title figure behind the wheel of an automobile with the top down. His RUST IN PEACE, with its skeleton seated in a bullet-riddled old truck, offers a different spin on the “death carts” pulled in Good Friday processions by New Mexico’s traditional lay religious brotherhoods known as the penitentes. “They’re meant to be a reminder that death is always around the corner, so you should lead a good life,” says Lopez. He’s also showing collaborative pieces he makes with his wife, jeweler Bernadette Marquez: lowrider bolo ties of carved wood and hand-stamped silver.

For Curtis Wade, the show’s theme has given rise to painted memories of family drives “through the high roads and back roads of Chimayo and Taos, noticing the old trucks parked in people’s yards,” just waiting, perhaps, to be transformed into lowriders. His paintings LOW N’ SLOW IN CHIMAYO and BIG RED TESUQUE TRAILS portray just such revitalized Chevys in a “clean, sharp, contemporary realist” style, against brightly colored, stylized southwestern landscapes. “It’s on my bucket list to own an old truck like that,” adds the artist.

Many visitors to the Manitou exhibition may well find that the art on view enables them to check off an item on their own bucket lists. “Trucks and automobiles like this are such a staple in New Mexican culture,” notes Hall, who adds enthusiastically, “Shows like this are so much fun to curate.” —Norman Kolpas

contact information
505.986.0440
www.manitougalleries.com

This story was featured in the May 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art May 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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