Save the Date: “SOMOS LOCOS” Exhibition & Music with CALIFORNIA LOCOS, at Manhattan Beach Art Center – March 18th

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Join us for SOMOS LOCOS, the latest stop on the CALIFORNIA LOCOS pop-up tour, which will be consisting of evolving exhibitions and historic cultural events at the Manhattan Beach Art Center. During the CALIFORNIA LOCOS pop-up tour at the Manhattan Beach Art Center, there will be a group show of original art works, rare ephemera, and fresh surprises from the original LOCOS lineup of Chaz Bojórquez, Dave Tourjé, John Van Hamersveld, Norton Wisdom and Gary Wong.

A decades old but freshly christened movement, the LOCOS derive points of view from a hybrid insider/outsider mix of higher education and non-traditional artistic experience. With an iconoclasm bred in the interlaced underworlds of surf, skate, graffiti, and and punk, the LOCOS represent and continue to celebrate, a break from the shiny optimism of the past that had come to define LA’s visual culture, seeking instead to replace it with something dirtier, rougher, and far more vital.

Like all great artists, these five have never stopped working, never stopped growing, absorbing, refining, and innovating. Rather than leveraging their past only, they remain a vital force as they challenge themselves individually and collectively, making the best works of their lives in the present.

Their movement has gained momentum, from Chinatown to Miami, Venice Beach to Virginia Beach and now Manhattan Beach and beyond. They excavate and expand upon their unique, colorful movement, and in so doing have captured global attention for their emblematic status within LA cultural history. This exhibition not only taps into LA’s resurgent interest in its own history, but also resonates with the international art world’s current recognition as well. Building on its living, archival foundation, SOMOS LOCOS creates a deeper layer, examining the decades-long art practices and individual styles of each of the LOCOS subsequent to the early heady days, and how their mature practices have continued to intertwine with the new generations of street, skate, surf, and pop surrealistartists.

SOMOS LOCOS opens March 16, 2017 at the Manhattan Beach Art Center, with a free public reception on Saturday, March 18, 3-9pm, featuring live music from Steve Alba’s PowerFlex 5, Charlie Chan and the SOBs, and Los Savages. The exhibition also sees the release of both a new Dusters skateboard design for longboard and street, with an original LOCOS design by Duster’s Creative Director Nano Nobrega, and a hardcover book release with essays by art scholars Charlotte Eyerman, Jim Daichendt and Introduction by art critic Shana Nys Dambrot.

Schedule of events for Saturday March 18th:
1pm – Skatepark Opening
3pm – Live Music: Los Savages, Charlie Chan & The SOBs, Steve Alba & Powerflex 5
6pm – Somos Locos Art Show

Also, check out our interview with the LOOCS.

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