Tiger Strikes Asteroid Greenville is excited to share its next exhibition, Scorched Landscapes, a solo exhibition with new work by L.A.-based printmaker and interdisciplinary artist, Israel Campos. The exhibition will run from January 11th - February 7th, 2025, with a closing reception on Saturday February 7th from 6 - 9 pm.

In Scorched Landscapes, Israel Campos explores Chican/o/a/x motifs to examine aspects of Mexican-American identity amidst environmental and cultural destruction as it is seen and felt within Los Angeles, California. Campos leverages the flatness and lack of perspectival illusionistic space recognizable in the Mesoamerican codices, incorporates figurative stylizations, and works with material metaphor; making paintings on the same material used in Mesoamerica– amate–a paper pulp made from wild fig tree bark. By using historical iconography and contemporary cultural signifiers, Campos places our current moment firmly and imaginatively within a longer timeline–one that encapsulates the past to ask questions about our future. In doing so, he embarks on answering those questions using an allegorical narrative that embraces renewal and regeneration while confronting the violence of environmental calamity with storytelling and symbolism that has been particularly visible in Los Angeles, where raging wildfires and destructive flash flooding disproportionately impact the Latino community due to their large presence in the agricultural sector.

In Campos’s words, Scorched Landscapes utilizes fire as a cleansing force. As St. Augustine wrote, “The fire which makes gold shine makes chaff smoke.” The exhibit challenges the viewer to perceive the current man-made environmental catastrophe as an opportunity for reflection. In the Mesoamerican tradition, chaos is viewed as an opportunity for regeneration. Chaos brings forth metamorphosis which can allow life to be renewed. This is an opportunity to reflect on how we can be better stewards of the land and honor the people that lived here before us.”

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Israel is an interdisciplinary queer L.A. based artist that works with paintings, print media, digital media, and artist books. His work embraces the art tradition from Mesoamerica to explore how historical events are interconnected and reverberate into the present. He is a Chicano artist that investigates pre-Columbian iconography, generational myths, oral folklore, and contemporary pop culture to collapse the centuries separating the different artforms.