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THE WASHINGTON POST
Latino Artists in the Right 'Directions' (excerpt)
By Michael O'Sullivan
Friday, June 8, 2007; Page WE44

On view since April at the Cultural Institute of Mexico, "Directions: DC Contemporary Latino Artists" was conceived as a way to bring sorely needed attention to the work of artists who don't always get enough. It offered works by 10 young Latino artists connected to the city as a side dish to artDC, the international fair of contemporary and modern art that ran April 27-30 at the Washington Convention Center. But even with the fair long since closed, "Directions" is still worth visiting in its final week, both for those who might have missed it in the artDC hoopla and for those who have wondered whether there even is such a thing as "Latino" art.
The show's title, ambiguously enough, suggests that there is -- and isn't. "Directions," of course, gives the lie to the monolithism of the phrase "Latino art," implying as it does a multiplicity of approaches rather than a single one.

Writing in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition, curator Laura Roulet refers to a "condition of hybridity" explored by many Latino artists: a sense of being at once in, yet not of, a place. Maybe it's this that sharpens a sense of haves and have-nots, of insiders and outsiders.

In his dead-on mock-up of a booth at any contemporary art fair, Jose Ruiz gets delicious digs in at art-world flavors of the month. His smirky renderings of cartoons by someone called "Sebastian Twee," for instance, look suspiciously like the tiny pen-and-ink drawings of Andy Moon Wilson (or any of the many artists today whose work resembles high school doodles).

Yet Ruiz, whose work can also be found in a new show at Washington's G Fine Art, is hardly an art-world outsider. Perhaps the most telling sign (not to mention the most encouraging) about "Directions" is the degree to which its participants are not just engaged in, but invited to, the contemporary art conversation.