Vincent Valdez's new exhibition at San Antonio's ArtPace offers 'meditation on violence'

Lynching victims, forcibly disappeared individuals and hooded monsters of the Ku Klux Klan are among the loaded subjects San Antonio-born artist Vincent Valdez tackles in his powerful drawings, paintings and prints.

A decade ago, Valdez took over Artpace’s Hudson Showroom with The Strangest Fruit — an arresting exhibition of large-scale paintings exploring the oft-erased history of Mexicans and Mexican Americans lynched in Texas between the 1800s and the 1930s. The series title references “Strange Fruit,” a protest poem by Abel Meeropol set to music and popularized by Billie Holiday in 1939. It soon became the anthem of the anti-lynching movement.

Now based in Los Angeles, Valdez is returning to Artpace with a hybrid exhibition that furthers one of his key artistic missions: “to incite public remembrance and to impede distorted realities.” The exhibition's opening reception will take place this Thursday, and the work will remain on view through Dec. 1.

Curated by Art League Houston’s Zhaira Costiniano, Valdez’s Undercurrents is anchored by Siete Dias/Seven Days , a 2022 series comprised of silkscreened panels — 14 depicting individuals who vanished in Central and South America and seven spelling out the days of the week in Spanish. Printed on translucent textiles and suspended from the ceiling, the images suggest souls being erased or fading out of existence.

“This series is a meditation on the violence that has historically been unleashed, in many cases as a direct result of U.S. government foreign policy and military interventions intended to disrupt and crush social and political opposition to American imperialism in Latin America,” Valdez said of the project when it debuted in 2022.

Incredibly timely with a terrifying election on the horizon, Valdez’s lithographic series Since 1977 stars U.S. presidents dating back to the artist’s birth year as they appear to sink or slide off the edge of the paper. (All we see of 45 is a scraggly eyebrow and his nauseating hairdo.)

Offering additional context, Undercurrents also includes a selection of works by artists who inspired Valdez — more than a few Artpace alumni among them. Of particular interest are Valdez partner Adriana Corral’s Latitudes , a series of blind debossed etchings (letterpress prints without ink) based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and his mentor Rubio’s large-format work January 6th Selfie .

Free, opening reception 6-9 p.m. Thursday, July 11, on view 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, through Dec. 1, Artpace, 445 N. Main Ave., (210) 212-4900, artpace.org .

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