Solo exhibition by Juan Bastardo, curated by Dinghy Rig
Guadalajara-based Mexican artist, Juan Bastardo, presents Minilab for Future Inspection of Color, a speculative research platform where color is examined not simply as a visual attribute, but as a sort of technological artifact and historical archive. Rather than approaching color as a neutral aesthetic element, the project treats it as a site where industrial production, scientific knowledge, cultural symbolism, and political histories converge. Within this framework, every pigment, luminous surface, or digital color value carries traces of the systems that produced it.
Minilab for Future Inspection of Color is an experimental/speculative project that investigates color as more than a visual phenomenon. Treating color as a technological artifact and cultural archive, the project explores how pigments and color systems carry traces of industrial production, scientific knowledge, and political history.
Juan Bastardo is a transnational artist born in Guadalajara, Mexico, based between Mexico and California.
Combining sculpture, art installations, and video involves concepts such as indeterminacy and hybridization, alongside manual and digital processes to question and reflect upon artifacts and their ability to modify and reinvent the individual, as well as their public, historical, and contemporary discourses and dimensions.
He holds an MFA from the University of California, San Diego, a BFA degree in Visual Arts from the University of Guadalajara, and a BA degree in Design from the Bribiesca Art Institute in Mexico.
His work has been exhibited in places such as The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art in Riverside, the San Diego Art Institute (now ICA San Diego). The Armory Center for The Arts in Pasadena. The Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art (RAFFMA) in San Bernardino. The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. Torrance Art Museum in Torrance. Vincent Price Museum in Los Angeles, California, as well as CECUT in Tijuana, Baja California, Museo de las Artes, Museo de la Ciudad, and Museo Raúl Anguiano in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The show is hosted by Dinghy Rig, a collaborative artist-run art production and exhibition program launched by Aitor Lajarin-Encina and Marius Lehene. Juan Bastardo’s exhibition is the sixth installment of a long-term collaboration with the Museum of Art | Fort Collins, which is hosting the Dinghy Rig shows in what used to be the building’s safety vault room. The project benefits from the generous support of Peter D. Springberg, MD.
