Juan Bastardo

Juan Bastardo is an artist, educator, and researcher. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Visual Arts at University of California, San Diego. He teaches Visual Arts based in Conceptual Art Development, and Visual Experimentation Labs at Universidad de Guadalajara in Mexico; he is also a collaborator at COIARTS, the International Colloquium of Art and Society. He received his bachelor's degree from Universidad de Guadalajara in Visual Arts with a major in painting. He is a former recipient of fellowships from the Russell Grant at UCSD 2020, the Grodman Foundation in Guadalajara 2018, the 2007 and 2006 Fellowship Award at MoLAA (Museum of Latin American Art) Long Beach, and The Vermont Studio Center Fellowship 2006. He has exhibited his work at several sites in California such as Commons Gallery at UCSD in San Diego (2019), Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art in San Bernardino (2018), Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach (2016), Torrance Art Museum in Torrance (2015), Vincent Price Museum in Los Angeles (2013), as well as at Espacio Tolsa (2019), Museo de las Artes (2018), Museo de la Ciudad (2016), and Museo Raul Anguiano (2014), in Guadalajara, Mexico.

He sees himself as a person who can contribute to advancements in several ways to make art that will result in critical proposals. Furthermore, he is aware of the big challenge that is to become a highly prepared artist who strengthens projects that not only benefit the art community, but also its context, and members.

His work attempts to intertwine the technological, the virtual, and the material as well as cultural references ─ such as the current national/global imaginary, which he is convinced has a crucial role in contemporary production of art, on the one hand, because he belongs to The Traditional Mexican School of Painting, and on the other, because his processes are deeply influenced by his surroundings, rather than being defined by a particular medium. And last but not least, because as an artist he is constantly investigating the limited and often flawed nature of human perceptions, the manner in which bodies directly experience the world. In this same context, his work is constantly changing, sometimes in traditional or simple ways, more complex or technologized, at other times. Through his work –which includes sculpture, painting, drawing, installation, and video– he finds connections that make him aware of inquiries that have led him to explore his own motives as an artist. In that sense, he tries to develop a very personal form of research, process, and work: about and through materials, objects, technologies, and contemporary imaginary. Furthermore, it must be also noted, that in relation to historical and cultural background, to the digital and the hand-crafted in art making, he has created a response on how to articulate his art practice, its development and related research for a more clear understanding of contemporariness, situating his practice in a broader context.