Victor Estrada’s new exhibition appears as an inadvertent, if timely, response to current social upheavals and the militarized chaos that has seized the region. The action-adventure video game, Assassin’s Creed, is an oblique, unlikely inspiration for the show’s provocative title, underscoring the judicious skepticism required in an often rudderless world.
Most of the paintings are relatively modest in size, with an oozing and globby corporeality dispatched with a painterly sensibility. Brown Power Universe (UXA/PFTF 6) (2003-2025), features a swath of brown paint on a background of lighter palettes: an urgent and emphatic “tag.” The sides of the work are labeled with “Brown Power” in case the painter’s intent is unclear. The sole sculpture, Yellow, Red, Grey – Candy Mountain (2010 – 2025), offers a bit of pensive levity with its color-drenched tentacle.
Estrada has expended much impassioned energy into the works on view, many of which were composed over several years, often adding elements—like a photograph—to the works. They are distinctly and consistently enthusiastic, with signature, gestural applications of thick bands of paint. It’s clear he derives a lot of pleasure—release, perhaps—in creating the abstractions that reject a straightforward assessment and challenge the onlooker to parse their meaning. Operating within a notion of “brown consciousness,” a tacit recognition of how race and skin color continue to shape social realities, the works are imbued with vehement urgency. If the non-representational narratives appear somewhat challenging, perhaps it’s because Estrada is working with a language he feels is yet to be acknowledged in a mainstream art world.
José Esteban Muñoz coined “The Sense of Brown,” a critical framework for encompassing identities, cultural hybridity, and historical complexity. Estrada’s paintings are oblique references to Muñoz’s concept, offering idiosyncratic figurative and abstract interpretations imbued with West Coast sensibilities.”
True to form, Estrada continues to provoke and confound, and the results couldn’t be more engaging.