Carmen Argote’s “Arrangement of Wares (Full)” is a large-scale drawing composed of repetitive marks made through the application of coffee washes to the paper surface. Taken from the artist’s body of work titled “Pyramids” first shown in 2017 at PANEL, Los Angeles; Argote made use of poor materials that are often discarded such as ripped cardboard, coffee grounds and pine needles, raising issues surrounding labor and class, economic mobility and distorted notions of luxury and value. Coffee, much like many of the materials that Argote creates her work with, “directly references histories of labor, violence, oppression, and colonialism through the visual language of abstraction." The drawing itself features an unmarred rectangular space at the top, a nod to the language of minimalism, contrasted perfectly by the surrounding irregular marks in gradations of browns and tans, each irregular mark creating an ombre effect that goes form light at the center to dark at the edges.
Born in 1981 in Guadalajara, Mexico, Carmen Argote lives and works in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The artist currently has a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Other exhibitions have been held at the MCA San Diego; Primary, Nottingham; Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles and the New Museum, New York. Argote holds both an MFA and BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and was the recipient of Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, Artadia Los Angeles Award, and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists.
Argote’s work is in the public collections of Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach.
