Christo Oropeza: Aun así pienso en ti (Still I Think of You)

Exhibition catalog for the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture
The second in a series documenting projects in Mural Alley at Fort Mason Center
Foreword by Mike Buhler; introduction by Frank Smigiel

From Mike Buhler’s foreword:
You may have walked through the space between Fort Mason’s Landmark Buildings B and C, which we colloquially refer to as “mural alley” during Christo Oropeza’s Aun asi, pienso en ti and had to look twice to see if the everyday tools represented in the murals were painted or not. If not for the scale of the portraits, it would be hard to tell. If not for the scale of the portraits, it would be hard to tell.

From Christo Oropeza’s interview:
I knew that I wanted to find a way to communicate a connection to military and federal history that’s part of Fort Mason without engaging in images of violence. For example, I’ve pictured a truck but it’s unclear what cargo is in the back. It’s left up to interpretation. The purpose is to think of the person driving it, and their connection to the military. I didn’t want to glorify the military, but I wanted to honor the mechanics and the people behind it. Whether it was Fort Mason as a military outpost, a warehouse, or a place of commerce, the goal was for people who work in these places to see themselves on the wall. There’s no keyboards or typewriters there and I certainly could have kept going with the series, but the design was intended to be an equalizer and a connector between images of things that maybe somebody who’s in the arts could look at, somebody who’s working in the building can look at, or also somebody who’s looking back towards the history of these buildings, could look at with respect to each panel somehow relating to each other in their own simplicity, in their own still likeness, so to speak.

64 pages
7 x 9 inches