@ the luggage store
1007 Market Street (nr 6th), San Francisco

Opening: Friday May 11, 6-8pm

Closing Reception: Friday, June 22, 6-8pm
featuring The Nurses and Black Rainbow (punk), plus spoken word with Erika Cespedes Kent, Luara, Venturi & Eugeniya Kirovski..

Lecture/Discussion: Saturday, May 12, 3-6pm
with Rigo 23, Keith McHenry, Garth Ferguson, and other guests TBA.

Lecture/Discussion: Saturday, June 23, 3-5pm

*Open Sunday, June 24, 10am-2pm (special hours)

Gallery Hours
Wednesday-Saturday, 12-5pm and by appt

It is with great pleasure and honor that we present “Backtracking 199485,” a solo exhibition by Rigo 23: new large scale mixed media drawings with text on canvas with handmade zines accompanying each new work. Rigo’s graphic imagery borrows stylistically from signage, advertising, cartoons, logos and newsprint photography.

San Francisco has always been regarded as a “safe haven” for social experimentation; and as a place where differences enriched rather than divided the socio-political landscape. San Francisco was a sanctuary town, which welcomed individuals fleeing from war and hunger. San Francisco welcomed people moving towards freedom of expression -- sexually, politically, socially, artistically and spiritually; and as Rigo says, who “…at least walked towards a better and more humane collective future.”

This new body of work portrays activists and events that have influenced and shaped local Bay Area, national and global politics, that have all but been forgotten in the Bay Area; and stems too, from the artist's need and desire to share some seminal moments in this particularly vital period 1985-1994 that shaped and influenced his life in the Bay Area. It is a poignant show too, for the luggage store, as we move in to our 20th year and reflect back to the artists that we have worked with, learned from and grown with… and who have “held the branches aside,’ to open up new or obstructed pathways. Rigo is one of those artists.

Rigo 23 pays tribute to, honor and thanks those who have sought to preserve and extend freedom.

Dr. Huey P. Newton, (1942-1989), co founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

Dolores Huerta (b 1930), co founder United Farm Workers of America and co founder with Cesar Chavez of the National Farm Workers Association

ARC/AIDS Vigil on UN Plaza at Civic Center, (1985) focusing on the connections between homelessness, poverty and HIV.

Keith McHenry, Co-Founder, Food Not Bombs.

Critical Mass, monthly mass bicycle/non-car ride.

Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran Against the War who protested US arms shipments to Central America by practicing civil disobedience

Judi Bari (1949-1997) Earth First! Activist

 
Representations of time and issues of justice have always played an important role in Rigo’s artistic practice. Towards an ever more meaningful intercommunalism… Rigo continues to place his powerful and profound murals, paintings, sculptures, and tile works in strategic locations and encourages us to examine our “participation” in local, national and global community issues and policies.

His first solo show at the Richmond Art Center in 1994 was titled "Time and Time Again" and was dedicated exclusively to the plight of Geronimo Ji Jaga, at the time incarcerated at Mule Creek State Penitentiary. In 1992 he did a series of works focusing on the 500-year celebrations of the arrival of Europeans to this continent. In 2002 he painted a giant mural across the street from the Civic Center entitled “Truth” in dedication to Robert King Wilkerson, an ex-Black Panther who after spending 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola State Prison was released from prison and found innocent.

A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute (BFA) and Stanford University (MFA), Rigo has been exhibiting work for over 20 years internationally and locally. He has had solo exhibitions at the Museo de Art Contemporanea in Brazil, Artists Space in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile, The DeYoung Museum,Paule Anglim Gallery in San Francisco. He has participated in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum, the 2006 Liverpool Biennial; the Liverpool Biennial, and has been featured in a wealth of group exhibitions including The SFMOMA, The Berkeley Art Museum, and thePasadena Museum of Art.

Rigo has been awarded public commissions from the San Francisco International Airport, the Gerbode Foundation and the San Francisco Arts Commission, as well as permanent murals and terrazzo walks in Portugal. In October of 2005, a commissioned outdoor sculpture was dedicated on the campus of San Jose State University. Rigo depicted the two 1968 Olympic athletes, Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos in a larger-than-life version of their fisted salute. His much-publicized San Francisco

A mid-career survey exhibition of Rigo’s work, Jam Sessions: RIGO 84 – 23, is traveling from The Centro das Artes, Casa das Mudas in Madeira, Portugal onward to Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, Brazil in 2007.murals, “One Tree” and “Inner City Home” have made him a spokesperson for urban San Francisco residents. In 1999, Rigo received the SECA Award from SFMOMA. In 2006, he received a Eureka Fellowship awarded by the Fleishhacker Foundation.