Carlos Almaraz
Carlos Almaraz (American, 1941-1989). West Coast Crash, edition 130/140, 1990. Silkscreen. 25 1/4 x 59 1/2 inches. Published by Modern Multiples, Los Angeles, CA. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer
West Coast Crash depicts a fiery car crash against a backdrop of cultivated fields and rolling hills. Automobiles were an early harbinger of progress; here, in an abstract eruption of fire and motion, progress has become destruction. Car crashes are a repeating element in Almaraz’s art practice, an aesthetic and gestural evocation of how human development dangerously permeates the environment. In West Coast Crash, as fire rains down on neatly-tilled farmlands, the implicit critique of the human impact on the natural world extends beyond the polluting and violent car crash, with the flames illuminating also the conditions of labor and industrial farming that shape the landscape.
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