Einar & Jamex de la Torre
Ship of Fools
Koplin Del Rio Gallery and Traver Gallery are pleased to announce Ship of Fools, a jointly hosted exhibition by Einar and Jamex de la Torre, opening on Saturday, August 16 at West Canal Yards in a temporary gallery space on the second floor. The exhibition will feature a selection of recent lenticular works, alongside new blown glass work and mixed media works created during the brothers’ recent summer residency (2025) at Pilchuck Glass School.
Drawing on Mexican, American, and Indigenous iconographies, the de la Torre brothers address the pressing social, political, and cultural issues of our time. Their distinctive aesthetic, characterized by maximalist, layered, and relentless nature, combines blown glass and cast resin, embedded with doll and creature parts, quinceanera/bridal cake toppers, taxidermy eyeballs, and fake gold coins. Their work is at once hypnotic and critical, visually overwhelming yet deliberately constructed to reveal commentary on capitalism, consumerism, power, and spectacle.
“The complexities of the immigrant experience and contradicting bicultural identities, as well as our current life and practice on both sides of the border, really propel our narrative and aesthetics,” says Einar de la Torre.
Ship of Fools is a dizzying, psychotropic journey through the ephemera of the present: Lucha Libre wrestlers, chimeras, pre-Columbian gods, billionaires, and television pundits collide in kaleidoscopic compositions that embrace humor, critique, and contradiction. These new works dare viewers to reconsider what they see—then look again.
For over three decades, Einar and Jamex de la Torre have cultivated a collaborative practice rooted in contradiction and cultural remix. Living and working between Baja California and Southern California, they seamlessly integrate blown glass, lenticular printing, and digital media with carefully chosen material culture implements collected during their extensive global teaching and exhibition travels. Their art is deeply informed by both the vernacular Mexican art and contemporary critique.
Their awards include the USA Artists Fellowship, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the San Diego Art Prize, and the California Arts Council Legacy Grant Award. They have completed eight major public commissions, participated in four international biennales, and held over 25 solo museum exhibitions. Their traveling retrospective, Collidoscope, which originated at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, Riverside, CA in 2023, continues to tour nationally. Collidoscope is currently on view at the Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, through September 21, 2025.
