Bay Area Walls: Isaac Vazquez Avila, Slow Burn @ SFMOMA

Isaac Vazquez Avila’s mural Slow Burn conjures a sprawling horizon, from the orange glow of sunsets over the Pacific Ocean to the rambling cityscapes near his home and studio in Bernal Heights and his birthplace, Mexico City. Echoing the syncopated samba rhythms that the artist listened to as he worked, the composition is punctuated by motifs drawn from art, architecture, and everyday life. A geometric stepped-fret spiral design alludes to Mesoamerican ornamentation, while a pair of birds in flight nod to the work of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide.

Working in acrylic, gouache, oil pastel, milk paint, and marble dust, Vazquez Avila fuses techniques from easel painting, sculpture, and hand-painted signage. The resulting textured surface recalls the weathered, sun-soaked murals of Los Angeles’s Ramona Gardens and Estrada Courts housing projects. Drawing on the spirit of lovingly worn public art projects by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros across Mexico City and San Francisco, Vazquez Avila transforms the museum’s free-to-see Floor 2 space.

Bay Area Walls

SFMOMA presents a series of commissions and other site-responsive wall projects by local artists that actively engage with pressing issues of our time. Many of 2020’s inaugural projects delved into the consequences of a year of social isolation and unrest, polarizing news, racial injustice, economic crises, all against a backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now ongoing, the program is designed to support local artists who are keenly attuned to our community and current moment.