Alex Donis Selected Works: 1995 - 2006
Press Release
For Immediate Release
Alex Donis
Selected Works: 1995 - 2006
A selection of Alex Donis’ work spanning 12 years of creative production will open Tuesday, August 21st at the Cerritos College Art Gallery. The exhibition will run through September 25th. An opening reception for the Artist will be held Wednesday August 29th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 pm and an artist walkthrough will take place Thursday, September 6th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 pm.
Alex Donis is a Los Angeles-based visual artist whose work examines and redefines the boundaries set within religion, politics, race, and sexuality. Interested in toppling societies' relationship to culture & images, his work is often influenced by a tri-cultural (Pop, Latino & Queer) experience. He has worked extensively in a variety of media including painting, installation, video, and works on paper.
Alex Donis: Selected Works 1995 - 2006 includes work from his series, Altar de Amor, My Cathedral, War, Heroina and Pas de Deux. The series Altar de Amour and My Cathedral both draw from figures in popular culture particularly film history, politics and religion to comment on sexuality and spirituality . The figures in My Cathedral are depicted in embrace, kissing, their union a metaphor for a marriage of ideas and divergent points of view. The works in War and Pas de Deux include figures of police and gang members (War) and combat enemies (Pas de Deux) frozen in dramatic dance pose in contradiction to our perceptions of how these figures should interact. The series Heroinadepicts women known to the artist in poses relating to well known paintings from art history, transforming the figures into sublime characters in epic dramas of the self.
Donis was born in 1964 in Chicago, IL and was educated at a Catholic school in East Los Angeles, an east-coast prep school in Massachusetts, and a military academy on the southern coast of Guatemala. He received his undergraduate degree at California State University, Long Beach and his graduate degree from Otis College of Art & Design.
Donis has exhibited his work at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art & Culture; the Santa Monica Museum of Art; the Longwood Art Center, New York; the Geffen Contemporary (MoCA); the Laguna Museum of Art, Laguna Beach; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); the Mexican Museum, San Francisco; Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago; Galeria de la Raza, San Francisco; Columbia University, New York; and Artspace, Sydney Australia. His work was included in the landmark exhibition "Made in California: Art, Image, & Identity 1900-2000" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
His work has been featured in FlashArt International, Art Papers, Art in America, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Sydney Morning Herald. His work is part of the 2 volume anthology "Contemporary Chicano/Chicana Art in the United States" published by the Bilingual Press of the University of Arizona, Phoenix and "Potentially Harmful: The Art of American Censorship" published by Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. Alex has also been awarded residencies at the University of Texas, Austin; the Brandywine Institute, Philadelphia; Artspace, Sydney, Australia; and at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA. He is represented by Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica, CA.
The Cerritos College Art Gallery is located at:
Room FA50
11110 Alondra Blvd
Norwalk, CA 90650
Directions, parking and additional information can be obtained from our web site,
For additional information contact the art gallery at (562) 860-2451 ext. 2612 or
Cerritos College
