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ART/SNEAK PEEK: CURATOR MAKING HIS MOVE TO RESHAPE L.A. ART SCENE.


So what if Jaime Villaneda has a few beefs with L.A.'s contemporary art scene? Hey, he has a few problems with L.A. - period.

``I don't like L.A., even to this day. I'm still not sold on the charms of L.A.,'' says Villaneda, one of a handful of professional Latino art curators working in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, .

An odd confession? Perhaps. After all, the 31-year-old Yale grad is a successful product of the city's Echo Park district, the vibrant polyglot pol·y·glot  
adj.
Speaking, writing, written in, or composed of several languages.

n.
1. A person having a speaking, reading, or writing knowledge of several languages.

2.
 neighborhood where his family immigrated from Mexico in the early 1970s. Later, Villaneda became an academic star at John Marshall High School There are several high schools in the United States named after the early United States politician and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, including:
  • John Marshall High School (Los Angeles) in the Los Angeles Unified School District of Los Angeles, California
, launching him toward a double major in art history and Latin American studies Latin American Studies (sometimes abbreviated LAS) is an academic discipline which studies the history and experience of peoples and cultures in the Americas. Definition .

Since 1994, the soft-spoken son of a factory ironing woman has been gallery coordinator at Pasadena's Armory Center for the Arts, where he recently curated his first exhibition to laudatory laud·a·to·ry  
adj.
Expressing or conferring praise: a laudatory review of the new play.


laudatory
Adjective

(of speech or writing) expressing praise

Adj.
 reviews.

``He's the best assistant I've had since 1982,'' says Jay Belloli, the Armory's director of gallery programs for the past seven years. ``Somebody this smart and this good needs opportunities.''

Villaneda also puts in 20 hours a week lecturing children's groups at downtown's Museum of Contemporary Art and helps out at a nonprofit foundation that provides arts training to talented L.A. students.

So what's not to like about this L.A. art gig, anyway?

Put it this way: When he goes gallery-surfing on weekends, the young curator often finds more to stimulate his intellect than his eyes.

``L.A. is very conceptual-art based,'' Villaneda says. ``I think it's more, like, witty, cold wit, `let's get our pun,' or whatever. I'm tired of going to museums and `reading' a work of art. Art is very visual.''

Or, at least, it used to be. As 20th-century art moved from surrealism to abstract expressionism abstract expressionism, movement of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the mid-1940s and attained singular prominence in American art in the following decade; also called action painting and the New York school.  to cryptic installations and opaque assemblages, Villaneda believes that certain things tended to get lost. Things like beauty, mystery and narrative.

``The one thing about L.A. that I laugh about is, they're always trying to be, like, `What's new, what's up and coming?' I thought it would be interesting instead of going forward to stop and look back.''

That interest recently culminated in his debut Armory exhibition, ``Romanticism and Contemporary Landscape.'' Consisting of 43 paintings, drawings and photographs, the exhibition focused on contemporary works that reach back to the 19th-century Romantic movement, which was obsessed ob·sess  
v. ob·sessed, ob·sess·ing, ob·sess·es

v.tr.
To preoccupy the mind of excessively.

v.intr.
 with moody landscapes and elegiac el·e·gi·ac  
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or involving elegy or mourning or expressing sorrow for that which is irrecoverably past: an elegiac lament for youthful ideals.

2.
 poetry.

Villaneda almost too easily fits the cliche of an immigrant success story. But after Yale, he endured a frustrating period in New York City New York City: see New York, city.
New York City

City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S.
 as a free-lance curator and gift shop manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He quickly learned that selling Vincent Van Gogh note cards and Andy Warhol print ties wasn't the same as working in the arts.

``I felt like I was doing glamorized Bloomingdale's,'' he says dryly.

After holding internships at two prominent contemporary galleries - Andre Emmerich in New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
 and Margo Leavin in Los Angeles - he leapt at the chance to take a part-time job at the Armory. And though he's still not sure what to make of his hometown, his complaints seem more like a native's affectionate grumblings than a true L.A.-basher's chronic discontent.

``The thing that I like about L.A. is there's a huge Chicano culture,'' he says. ``There's a thriving Chicano art community, but it's funny. You go to the art openings, you keep seeing the same faces. I don't think we as a race have really been taught to go to art museums.''
COPYRIGHT 1997 Daily News
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1997, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Title Annotation:L.A. LIFE
Publication:Daily News (Los Angeles, CA)
Date:Jul 18, 1997
Words:589
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