Edgar Ramirez invites us into a perspective of beauty which requires a refined taste to admire. The industrial ruggedness, unabashed in its attempts at representing the frictions of civilized fate and the invisible ordering of cargo and the human ignorance of achieving good things. It is in this coarseness at Chris Sharp Gallery which needs to be admired, possibly at a port city’s art institution, such as Long Beach, CA. For it is in this brute confrontation of the truth, of skid-scars from freight cars, and metallic rollicks from longshoremen muscle-pricks, which causes a person to awaken further on how much movement actually occurs on in his or her civilized state.

Edgar Ramirez. Unknown Title, 2023. House painted on cardboard, mounted on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery. Photography by Joshua White.

Is this its own humble Les Demoiselles d’Avignon staring before us with each composition? This is not a morality tale; this is not to shame us, only to enlighten us on what has moved the world toward greater boundaries of peaceful space, where toys and not weapons have been expanding across the water world – yet also preying upon the meek and ignorant illiterate in commercial paper. This drama is witnessed through the art’s representation of what substance? The container.

Edgar Ramirez. Smoke House no. 8, 2023. House painted on cardboard, mounted on canvas. 76″ x 59″ in. Courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery. Photography by Joshua White.

So beautifully universal in standard, the container is the evidence of a brotherhood of man toiling for the light of another day of happiness. To secure goods, to ship them, requires the awareness of liabilities; and it is in this hagiographic testimony to blemish which reveals the permanent certainty of the imperfection of human movement in commerce.

Edgar Ramirez. (Smoke) Remnant No. 14, 2023. House painted on cardboard, mounted on canvas. 48 in. x 37 in. Courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery. Photography by Joshua White.

This is liberating to realize; yet how tangible aware is the common consumer? Seeking to grasp, to reach, to add more; not appreciating how much that already is. And in stopping moving, in the moment of non-doing, there is this serenity. A peculiarly beauty, yet necessary truth.

For more information, please contact the gallery:

Chris Sharp Gallery
4650 W Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90016

General Inquiry
info@chrissharpgallery.com