169

In the following pages, you will be introduced to an extraordinary range of emerging artists and reintroduced to a few West Coast stalwarts, including past cover artist Alex Becerra. I want to thank Michael Wilson for contributing an essay to this issue. We have had the pleasure of working with him for more than a decade now and his insights are always welcome. Lastly, I want to thank the artists included and our loyal subscribers for their patience with the release of Issue #169, which was originally set to be in the world this past December. My hope is that New American Paintings will be back on its traditional release schedule by mid-2024.

It would not be hyperbolic to say that Issue #169 looks, feels, and, perhaps, even smells like Los Angeles—and not the glossy, sun-kissed L.A. that the city’s pervasive entertainment industry provides. Rather, the other, more interesting one: The one which encompasses hundreds of square miles of long city blocks that are home to countless micro-communities and an ethnically diverse population of nearly four million individuals. I have had the pleasure of spending a lot of time in Los Angeles over the past two decades, and while the glitz and glam might be intoxicating for an East Coast boy, the city’s heartbeat derives from its streets.

Close to two thirds of the artists in this issue call Los Angeles their home, and more than a quarter of them are of Latino/Hispanic origin. Individuals of this ethnic group comprise…

THE ONLY CONSTANT

After New York, Los Angeles is, reportedly, the city that has been destroyed most often in movies and TV shows—thirty-six times by some counts, though even that number seems conservative. Yet while the real-world metropolis remains extant, it is of course subject to constant change.

The art gathered in this edition of New American Paintings reflects a shared concern with patterns of decay and regeneration, the place from which much of it originates. This emphasis might be divided into two double-barreled categories: the formal-natural—denoting an abstract approach to the processes at hand and a focus on the physical world—and the personal-political—referring to the tracing of urban rise and fall through the development and often difficult coexistence of diverse psychologies and cultures.

In her intricate paintings and drawings, Rachel Borenstein might be said to embody the first of these two strands, exploring as she does the process of decomposition by reflecting on the prosaic objects and textures that surround her studio in L.A.’s Highland Park. Many of Borenstein’s works simulate the effects of crumpling, folding, or knotting, reminding us of her subjects’ innate vulnerability. Picturing eyes, leaves, and other subjects that seem to hover between life and death, the artist demonstrates how the intimate and ephemeral quality of memory is echoed in larger changes to our shared visible realm.

The paintings of Patricia Iglesias Peco, another Angeleno, also focus on organic structures—specifically, gardens teeming with flora and fauna, the swirling energy of which images a cycle of growth…