Happy New Year!

Wishing you all a safe and Happy New Year. Thanks for your support of my art this year. Looking forward to cranking out some new work. Stay tuned!!

Dog and Cat Show 2011

This is a painting going to Skinner/Howard Contemporary Art in Sacramento for their annual dog and cat benefit show. Should be fun. Drop by if you;re in the area.

Studio Redo

My studio's have always been in big warehouse spaces, but Since Heather and I moved to Sacramento and bought a house I've been painting out of the detached 2 car garage. Well we finally decided to get rid of that ugly garage door and wall it off. I can use more wall space and having french doors will let more light in. So just when I was gearing up to create some new work, it'll have to be on hold for a while till the work is done. Will post photos of the progress.

While I'm taking a break, I'll be shooting some short videos of artists I know. Will post them too!

"Halo-Halo: Bay Area Artists of the Filipino Diaspora."

I have been invited to participate in a group exhibition of FIlipino-American artists at the University of Hawaii, Hilo. Sounds like it's going to be a great show curated by Jenifer Wofford. Updates to come!!

I have 2 paintings in the traveling exhibition, "Infinate Mirror," opened in New Hampshire on Sept. 2 at the Thrrone-Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College.

Art in the Streets

Was in Los Angeles to see my son in a play and was able to catch the show at LAMOCA called Art in the Streets. It was an amazing survey of graffiti art from past to present. Here are some photos on Facebook.

Article - from the Curve

Illiterate Gallert T-Shirts

Got some t-shirts from Illiterate Gallery in Denver. There is Coco modeling for me. They turned out great. Makes me want to do my own run. Hmmmm. Stay tuned!

Off to Denver

Finally got the work packed so it's off to Denver tomorrow via FedEx. The drawing is called TayZr. Acrylic on paper.

Illiterate Gallery Pieces

Man, It's been a while since I've posted anything here. I'm in a show in Denver at Illiterate Gallery next month with some cool artists. Here are some piece that I'll be sending.

Video finally up and running!

SquareCylinder is a website created by writer David Roth which focuses on Northern California art. David, who has reviewed a couple shows in Art, Ltd. and his site, approached me to produce a video and it's finally here.

North Carolina artist, Patrick Dougherty came to Palo Alto to create a sculpture at the Palo Alto Art Center in January 2011. Check it out!

Gottfried Helnwein in the house

I was at the Crocker Art Museum last week to shoot 2 short videos of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein discussing his work. The dude looks like he should be in a rock and roll band. very nice guy! the videos will be playing on monitors for visitors.

An afternoon with artist Patrick Dougherty

I was in Palo Alto this past weekend with Heather to shoot some video of artist Patrick Dougherty at the Palo Alto Art Center. SquareCylinder founder and writer David Roth was there to interview Patrick. David's website is a portal for reviews of Northern California art. Check it out and also Patrick's site. Once the video is completed, I'll post the link from SquareCylinder.

Review of my show at Jack Fischer Gallery in Art, Ltd. Magazine

Thanks to DeWitt Cheng for writing this review of my show at Jack Fischer Gallery in SF.

John Yoyogi Fortes: "Parallel Boondocks" at Jack Fischer Gallery
by dewitt cheng
Jan 2011

It Sounded A Lot Better Before I Said It
2010
John Yoyogi Fortes
Acrylic, enamel and collage on canvas
12" x 9"
Photo: courtesy Jack Fischer Gallery

Eclecticism and hybridity may be common practice these days, but who would have thought that graffiti art, pop surrealism, and identity art (loosely defined) could combine as exuberantly as they do in John Yoyogi Fortes' paintings? Like his postcolonial colleagues Enrique Chagoya and Manuel Ocampo, Fortes employs cultural mash-ups to put a humorous and absurd face on the darker truths of imperialist history: his 2002 Triton Museum show, "Awakening the Sleeping Monkey," dealt with the 1904 exhibition of 1200 captured (aka liberated) Filipinos, at the St. Louis World's Fair, as cannibals. Fortes has also, however, explored how family, memory and identity persist or change in the tumultuous modern world. In "Parallel Boondocks," he continues mining lowbrow/comic imagery from newly met East and West for insights into the funhouse of modern consciousness. Fortes: "It's between the materials and me. It's about aligning that inner space where ideas flow freely and reveling in that moment where actions transcend language." The resultant paintings, with their layers of images and ricocheting meanings, are "map[s] to various levels of consciousness."

These maps are complex and ambiguous. Runt, a large diptych, combines beige, red and gray patches and swatches, some brushy and diffuse, others defined by hard edges, straight or scalloped, with loops, stripes, patterning and writing (manchica, or blot), and a bizarre cast of "actors": a naked, blob-headed muscleman posing atop a pedestal lying between female legs; a wooden duck"s head, bearing a bird photo in its eye and sporting a brick-patterned frying-pan hat; a snake-necked woman's head emerging from an ovoid picture frame; and a cartoon dog head, scowling, with its eyes transformed into probing bloodshot pseudopods. Cartoon animals reappear in the non-rectangular diptych, Repetition, Redemption, Relapse, joined by figure studies reminiscent of David Salle's, but collaged here rather than painted. Smaller works (Art is Evil, Punk, It Sounded a Lot Better Before I Said It) function as funny (in both senses) cartoon portraits reminiscent of Jim Nutt and Roy De Forest.