The De La Torre Brothers | Vodyanoy

 Quint Gallery’s ONE is excited to announce an installation of lenticulars and glass-blown mixed media sculptures from the oeuvre of brothers and artistic collaborators Einar and Jamex De La Torre. The artists were born in Guadalajara, Mexico but now create on both sides of the border in Baja California, Mexico and San Diego, CA. This multicultural perspective functions literally through their employment of lenticular technology, which uses multiple images meant to be viewed independently from different angles but merge together when viewed head on.

This perspective arises in the central work of the exhibition, Vodyanoy, which suffuses its title character (a creature of the swamps from slavic mythology that can care for people or drown them) with metaphors for a nature-deity serving an overdue bill for humanity’s excess. The results are shifting images of both utopian salvation and realistic warning, evidenced through the clean water flow brought on by meditative Sufi Whirling Dervishes. In the alternating image, a murky green swamp serves as the backdrop for Flemish renderings of the wounded and dead from futile wars. The De La Torre Brothers’ endless book of historical, cultural, religious, and artistic references are all compounded on and distilled in the moral storytelling which permeates their practice.

Also included in the exhibition are mixed media blown glass sculptures created over the past decade whose motifs elaborate on the multi-layered concerns of the De La Torre Brothers, including financial excess, corruption, and consumerism, which often lead back to the natural disasters looming large on the planet. Vodyanoy will remain on view at ONE through October 30, 2021.