Jeffrey Brown:
And so, in his exhibition, a series titled The New Americans, large portraits of community workers and others making a difference, another called Since 1977, with just the tops of the heads of U.S. presidents since the time of his birth, and a painted 1953 ice cream truck, a project Valdez did with musician Ry Cooder to honor the largely Mexican-American neighborhood torn down to make room for the building of L.A.’s Dodger Stadium.
There are darker stories of the so-called Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 targeting Mexican-Americans, and a group of paintings titled The Strangest Fruit, portraying young men, including friends of Valdez, dangling in the air, his intent, he says, to restore a history, documented, but little known, of the lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican Americans.
But these men bear markers, such as clothing, of contemporary life.
