Upward Mobility
de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility presented works that explore culture on both sides of the United States-México border. Brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre live and work in the Guadalupe Valley in Baja California, México, and San Diego, California. After developing individual artistic practices, they began to collaborate in the 1990s after discovering a shared passion for blown glass. de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility highlighted their distinct maximalist aesthetic through four galleries of glass sculpture, lenticular prints, video, and installations.
The brothers use motifs from Aztec mythology, Catholic iconography, popular culture, and art history to build symbolically loaded imagery. Their mixed media works playfully incorporate humor and satire into critiques of consumption and indulgence. de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility embraced contradiction and multiplicity, inviting the viewer to form their own opinions and responses.
de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility was organized by the McNay Art Museum and co-curated by René Paul Barilleaux, Head of Curatorial Affairs, and Lauren Thompson, Curator of Exhibitions, with assistance from Mia Lopez, Curator of Latinx Art.
In 2024, the Brothers completed a separate site-specific installation at the McNay, de la Torre Brothers: Latin Exoskeleton. On view Sept. 15, 2023 - Sept. 15, 2024, the work transformed the AT&T Lobby wall through a combination of trompe l’oeil wallpaper and lenticular images. Their presentations at the McNay were their first exhibitions in San Antonio.
Lead funding for de la Torre Brothers: Upward Mobility was most generously provided by the Elizabeth Huth Coates Charitable Foundation of 1992. Major funding was provided by The Brown Foundation, Semmes Foundation Inc., Frost Bank, The Joan and Herb Kelleher Charitable Foundation, and Humanities Texas.
McNay Art Museum
The McNay Art Museum engages a diverse community in the discovery and enjoyment of the visual arts. Built in the 1920s by artist and educator Marion Koogler McNay, the Spanish Colonial Revival residence became the site of Texas’s first museum of modern art when it opened in 1954.
Photo credit: Installation images courtesy of the McNay Art Museum.
San Antonio, TX
de la Torre Brothers, Upward Mobility
March 1 – September 15, 2024
