Jaime Muñoz speaks about the movement unlike many artists working today. He paints the movement of labor, not directly, but in a way that speaks to the mechanics and structure of how movement and labor are interconnected, and the ways in which labor gets from one place to another. Through an almost industrial, perfect airbrush technique, Muñoz uses the utilitarian methods to speak about a history of California, immigration, migration, labor commodification and the automobile. Born in LA, studying at UCLA and now based in Pomona, he has found a way to speak about California through familiar iconography but done in a refreshingly new way. When I spoke to him a few years ago in a feature in the Summer 2023 Quarterly, he told me, "I’ve never thought of myself as an artist who makes work about LA, although one of the central focuses in my work is commodity labor, and that theme definitely has a place in LA or any city wherever industry and labor exist. I do believe that this feeling of instability within labor is due to the constant conflict that working people face daily just to survive." The fact he calls his first museum show Truth Is A Moving Target seems perfectly to fit. —Evan Pricco
LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes presents Jaime Muñoz: Truth Is A Moving Target, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition featuring large-scale mixed-media paintings and ink diagram drawings. As the gallery notes, "Curated by Karen Crews Hendon, LA Plaza Director of Exhibitions and Senior Curator in partnership with Jaime Muñoz, the selection of work in this exhibit comes from multiple private collections and presents a chronological and aesthetic evolution of Muñoz’s work from 2019 to 2024, including his Toyotería and Blood Memory series, offering a comprehensive exploration of his artistic evolution and thematic depth."