
IMAGE: Eamon Ore-Giron, Talking Shit with Amaru, 2021. Mineral paint and Flashe on canvas. 132 x 204 inches. Installation view, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas, 2023. Artwork © Eamon Ore-Giron. Courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein.
This solo museum exhibition is the first to present the development of Eamon Ore-Giron’s dynamic painting practice over more than two decades, featuring works created between 1999 and 2021. Emphasizing that culture is never static, always in flux, and continually transformed through cross-fertilizations, Ore-Giron’s artistic practice exists at the intersection of different geographies, temporalities, and cultures.
Based in Los Angeles, Ore-Giron was born in Tucson, Arizona in 1973. He is inspired by his roots in the American Southwest, his visits to his father’s hometown of Huancayo, Peru, and his time spent as a practicing artist in California and Mexico. His paintings also draw from his explorations in other media, ranging from music, as a DJ, musician, and producer, to video art and sculpture. Across his painting practice, Ore-Giron remixes visual histories and influences, centering multiplicity and simultaneity.
Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago brings together three pivotal chapters in Ore-Giron’s career: his early figurative works that reference the cultural traditions of the Southwestern United States and Peru; his ongoing Talking Shit series of pre-colonial deities; and the sublime paintings of his recent Infinite Regress series. Ore-Giron’s early figurative works set the stage for the artist's ongoing preoccupations within painting explored in his more recent large-scale abstractions. By incorporating Modernist elements alongside sources from ancient and contemporary Indigenous cultures, Ore-Giron recontextualizes our understanding of abstraction within a more expansive tradition of artistic creativity in the Americas.
Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing with Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago is curated by Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The presentation at The Contemporary Austin is organized by Julie Le, Assistant Curator.
Eamon Ore-Giron. Photograph by Fabian Guerrero.
About the Artist:
Eamon Ore-Giron (b. 1973, Tucson, AZ; lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) blends a wide range of visual styles and influences in his brightly colored abstract geometric paintings. Referencing Indigenous and craft traditions as well as 20th-century avant-gardes, his paintings move between temporalities and resonate across cultural contexts. Ore-Giron also works in video and music, and his interdisciplinary projects explore the interrelationship of sound, color, rhythm, and pattern, and make manifest a history of transnational exchange. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, as a solo practitioner and as part of collaborative endeavors, and he has been selected to realize major public commissions in New York and Los Angeles. Ore-Giron received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Written by Miranda Lash, with contributions by C. Ondine Chavoya and Jace Clayton. Foreword by Nora Burnett Abrams.
As an artist, musician, and DJ, Eamon Ore-Giron mines the complex nature of Latinx identity, the history of the Americas, and the many legacies of abstraction in art. This vibrant volume, which accompanies a major solo exhibition at the MCA Denver, is the first to present the evolution of Ore-Giron’s dynamic paintings and sonic practice over the past three decades.
Co-presented with Landmarks, the public art program at The University of Texas at Austin
Experience exhibiting artist Eamon Ore-Giron in a conversation about his work, currently featured at two Austin institutions.
Led by Curator Julie Le
Dive deeper into current exhibition, Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing With Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago with Curator, Julie Le.
Celebrating the exhibition Eamon Ore-Giron: Competing With Lightning / Rivalizando con el relámpago and the Culmination of the New Cumbia Rooftop Sessions Series
Artist Eamon Ore-Giron (aka DJ LENGUA), joined by longtime collaborator and artist Gary Garay (aka GANAS), returns to Austin for a special DJ set.