Jaime Muñoz

Los Angeles artist Jaime Muñoz addresses complexities of Mexican American identity, engaging with themes such as the commodification of labor, religion, industry, technology, colonialism, and migration. Muñoz’s distinct aesthetic draws from broad inspirations ranging from his personal background working in construction and graphic design to examining Baroque art in Latin America. Decorative flourishes such as velvet flocking, applied paper, glitter, and impasto come together with crisply rendered iconography focusing on the nexus of mechanization and American labor. Muñoz’s images operate in a patchwork fashion, drawing throughlines between the unmistakable visual vocabulary of Southern California life (think vibrant ombrés, polychrome signage, and West Coast automobilia) and the visual language of popular culture and labor history.