Salon of Beauty opens in Rice Art Gallery

By Aaren Pastor     9/29/11 7:00pm

The delay has been worth it. Ana Serrano channels the playful vibrancy of Los Angeles urban neighborhoods into the formerly staid Gallery space with her newest installation Salon of Beauty.

The Gallery has been on an architecturally-influenced trend lately, and Ana Serrano's installation is no exception. However, Serrano stands out in that she has created a veritable neighborhood to move through. Her work is influenced by the barrios and low-socioeconomic areas of Los Angeles, where Serrano gleans much of her inspiration. Serrano has an interest in the individualized personalities of the barrios, where home and business owners have altered the stock box architecture of their buildings with color and odd details from their untrained eye.   

Salon of Beauty is the largest project Serrano has undertaken as a young artist, as she primarily works on a scale of two to three feet, not in a giant gallery space. In 2006, Serrano created Cartonlandia, a five-foot sculpture of an anthill of houses. Influences ranged from neighborhoods in Guanajuato, Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Cinque Terra, Italy and, of course, the distinctive intensity of Los Angeles.

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The flavor of the neighborhood Serrano has created is palpable. Security bars over windows and air conditioning units, fencing, multiple satellite antennas, graffiti rebuffs: all the idiosyncracies of an environment that is constantly in flux are captured in Salon of Beauty. The installation has a busy density, though the buildings are constructed primarily of cardboard. Though the frames are plywood and studs like a "real" building, Serrano utilizes cardboard for its manipulability, accessibility and its abundance. In an homage to the barrios that inspire her, Serrano also recognizes that many people from these neighborhoods collect cardboard to recycle for money.

All the rooftops are bathed in a cotton-candy glow. Although initially an accident from a splash of paint, Serrano loved the reminder of a smoggy, multi-colored Los Angeles sunset and painted all the rooftops pink. She alters the landscape, though with a highly trained eye. The colors of the buildings themselves — a cash check shop, an XXX bar, a UNISEX hair salon — are all outrageous and distinct. Store names are also direct: LIQUOR leaves no doubt as to the goods available for purchase. Similarly, the lettering and advertisements, perhaps littered with unintentional puns such as the XXX's "girls in rear," tell the patron where to enter the establishment.  The small details of the piece make you think you are truly walking through a neighborhood: there is the tendril of vine coiling delicately through a security bar, and a garden structured around cinderblocks that reminds you of "Roxaboxen," a community constructed primarily from rocks and colored glass.

The title Salon of Beauty is a literal translation into English of salón de belleza, which she found printed on a small mom-and-pop- salon in Los Angeles. Serrano found the awkwardness of the title touching, and reminiscent of the handmade nature of the neighborhoods from which she takes so much inspiration.

Salon of Beauty will run from September 29th to December 11, 2011.

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