WHAT: A selection of Alex Donis’ work spanning 12 years of creative production will open Tuesday, August 21 at the Cerritos College Art Gallery. The exhibition will run through September 25. An opening reception for the artist will be held Wednesday August 29, 6-8 p.m., and an artist walkthrough will take place Thursday, September 6, 5-7 p.m.

Alex Donis is a Los Angeles-based visual artist whose work examines and redefines the boundaries set within religion, politics, race, and sexuality. Focused upon toppling societies' relationship to culture and images, Donis' work is often influenced by a tri-cultural (pop, Latino and 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 "Heroina" depicts 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 and Design.

Donis has exhibited his work at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and 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, and Identity 1900-2000" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Donis' 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 two-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. Donis 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.

WHEN: Exhibit will be on view Tuesday, August 21 through Tuesday, September 25. An opening reception for the artist will be held Wednesday August 29, 6-8 p.m., and an artist walkthrough will take place Thursday, September 6, 5-7 p.m.

WHERE: Cerritos College Art Gallery - Fine Arts Building, room 50

Cerritos College

11110 Alondra Blvd
Norwalk, CA 90650

A map of the campus is available at www.cerritos.edu/guide

CONTACT: For information, please contact Gallery Director Christina Fernandez at cmfernandez@cerritos.edu, or at (562) 860-2451, ext. 2620.

Cerritos College serves as a comprehensive community college for southeastern Los Angeles County. Communities within the college's district include Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, La Mirada, Norwalk, and portions of Bell Gardens, Lakewood, Long Beach, Santa Fe Springs and South Gate. Cerritos College offers degrees and certificates in more than 180 areas of study in nine divisions. Annually, more than 1,200 students successfully complete their course of studies, and enrollment currently surpasses 20,000 students. Visit Cerritos College online at http://www.cerritos.edu/.

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Cerritos College

Releases 2007

Cerritos College Art Gallery to Feature Selected Works by Alex Donis