Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. Examines Cars as Icons of LA Life in 'NO PARKING'
Highlighting how cars become both relics and witnesses.
Summary
- Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.’s NO PARKING at Matthew Brown Gallery uses cars and urban structures to reflect the hidden lives of LA residents
- The exhibition features sculptures, multi-panel paintings and textured works
Matthew Brown Gallery opens NO PARKING, the second solo exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., on view through October 29.
The show presents vehicles as markers of city life. Burned vans, tagged trucks, crowded RVs and idle food trucks stand in for the people who inhabit them. Although no figures appear, the presence of workers, commuters and residents is strongly felt. Gonzalez Jr. treats each vehicle as a portrait of survival, time and memory.
The exhibition begins with two large-scale sculptures that resemble makeshift “No Parking” barriers and signage. Their rough paint and dirt recall both ancient structures and modern street detritus. Three nearby paintings reduce the metro landscape into meditations on texture and form.
In the main gallery, a 10-panel installation stretches across two walls. A spray-painted line links the canvases, echoing the rhythm of a mural. Works such as Medrano, a burned van beneath a mural of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam, and Tocco,” a fire-ravaged Porsche on the Malibu coast, highlight how cars become both relics and witnesses.
A trained sign painter, Gonzalez Jr. embraces imperfections with brush marks, spray streaks and layered textures that capture Los Angeles as a city of endurance, scars and fading traces.
Matthew Brown
633 N La Brea Ave #101F
Los Angeles, CA 90036
