“Secrets for the Moon” at University of La Verne’s Harris Gallery unites two artists, Ichiro Irie and Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia. Each employs quotidian materials to create totemic artworks in meditation upon his personal history and cultural roots. Both Irie and Hurtado Segovia are immigrants, from Japan and Mexico respectively. Reflecting their cosmopolitan identities as Los Angeles transplants while alluding to an increasingly consolidated world, works in this show feature signifiers of each artist’s origins embedded in multivalent symbols transcending time and place.

Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, Father and child (2017). Oak, elm, walnut, maple and ipe, 19 x 8 x 15.5 inches.

Hurtado Segovia’s monochromatic wood sculptures evoke Pacific island, African, and Native American carved totems while recalling Mexican folk art. In works such as Ave (2016), Father and child (2017), and Tótem (2016) rooster, hummingbird, and opuntia cacti forms betoken his Chihuahuan roots. Hurtado Segovia’s deliberate mixture of polished craftsmanship and raw wood of dilapidated appearance also resembles a contemporary “shabby chic” aesthetic of manufactured decor, bringing to mind the ubiquitous integration of heterogeneous styles and divergent cultural motifs into commercial products such as furniture.

Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, Tótem (2016). Elm, pecan, plum, walnut and maple, 52 x 12 x 23 inches.

Connoting California car culture and American automobile industry decline, Irie’s Impermanence 1 (2017) and Impermanence 2 (2017) depict automotive junkyards. The titles and content of these two large drawings suggest the inevitable ruin of individual cars, while also alluding to their own eventual deterioration: delineated with Sharpie markers on canvas, these detailed renderings will gradually evanesce.

Ichiro Irie, Impermanence 2 (2017). Permanent marker and white acrylic on canvas, 80 x 48 inches.

Irie’s “Imposter BL” series (2018) consists of eight black-on-white symbols made from poster putty on panel. Powerfully redolent of Japanese kamon, or clan crests, these symbols are logos from bands that influenced Irie during his youth. Symbolizing the bands’ formative effects, traces of his fingerprints remain palpable on the putty surfaces.

Ichiro Irie, Husker Du (2018). Poster putty on panel, 12 x 12 inches.

The texture of Irie’s manual palpation of poster putty echoes that of Hurtado Segovia’s irregularly carven wood. Similarly, Hurtado Segovia’s sparkly graphite drawings resonate the subtle sheen of Irie’s translucent black Sharpie layers. Interlaced with intriguing consonances, this exhibition educes each artist’s singular manner of transmuting ordinary icons through humble media.

Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, En Semana Santa (2018). Graphite on paper, 11 x 9 inches.

Ichiro Irie and Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia, “Secrets for the Moon,” September 4 – October 25, 2018, at Harris Art Gallery in the Landis Academic Center, University of La Verne, 1950 3rd Street, La Verne, CA  91750. artsci.laverne.edu/art/exhibition/

All images courtesy of the artists and Harris Gallery at University of La Verne.