Eduardo Smissen
I was born in the Los Angeles of the 1940’s. My earliest memories revolve around Mexican-Catholic images, Afro-Cuban sounds, soft female conversations with the
rhythm of hands slapping tortillas into existence mixed with men laughing so hard
they cried. Wall murals with colors so intense they would wake me in the night.
My childhood was full of the extremes I grew to trust and use as an adult.
The past was the present in the Los Angeles of the 1940’s.
The war had ended and people were using the known and the unknown to create a new world, drawing lines and counting the missing.
The language of my Los Angeles is a rhythm mix of Spanish and California English.
As the imagery had become a mix of Latin-American-Cinema-Comic book-Doowop…so did I.
I’ve been making things for most of my life. I sometimes see the things I make as stories, or as moments in time. These are my reflections of divine chuckles or the frustrated stutters. Mystery has always been a source for my work, from the long shadows of film noir to the burning giraffes of surrealism…
My heroes range from Dorothea Tanning, Gregory Gillespie to Chucho Valdes, my influences are everything I’ve lived and most of what I don’t know.
Making an object, with the intent of making art, usually gives me the sense of seeing other meanings. Sometimes this can only be a dialogue with an already understood idea and myself.
I do not think Art can change society.
I think Art can sensitize.
My working method is fairly simple: Gathering, Arranging, and Execution.
Thank you for your attention,
Eduardo Smissen
