Raúl Gonzo is known for his colorful, quirky, highly saturated images that contain satirical and humorous nods to childhood, consumerism, Pop art, television game shows, Alfred Hitchcock films, and standards of beauty. In Raúl Gonzo: Color Madness, the first museum exhibition for the Sacramento-based photographer, visitors to the Crocker Art Museum can explore a selection of Gonzo’s photographs taken from 2015 through today, as well as a new immersive installation that invites the public into the artist’s technicolor dream world.
Throughout his work, Gonzo uses a retrofuturist aesthetic. He recalls that as a child in the 1980s, his school textbooks and the commercial advertisements and science fiction films he watched projected a pseudo-1950s version of the future that never came to fruition. At first glance, many of Gonzo’s photographs communicate a sense of nostalgia, but with a twist. Before taking these and other images, Gonzo makes detailed sketches to determine the color relationships, costumes, and settings of the photos. He then meticulously stages each scene, employing local models and performers to play the characters within his handmade sets. The results depict relatable, yet unrealistic images of everyday life that typically focus on a suspenseful moment immediately before or after a dramatic misadventure. But it is up to the viewers to complete the narrative.
Many of the works in Raúl Gonzo aim to ask visitors to embrace surface-level color and composition while also questioning how American culture can be critiqued and reimagined through the smallest of details.
The exhibition is on view at the Crocker in downtown Sacramento, California, through October 20.
To learn more, visit crockerart.org.
