Like salt, art and creativity in all their expressions are basic, essential building blocks of life, believes Carla Tesak Arzente, owner of the new Salt Fine Art gallery in Laguna Beach, which features contemporary Latin American art with an emphasis on Central America. “Salt was one of the first things traded all over the world,” she says. “It crossed borders and broke down barriers between people. Art does the same—it is always pushing forward.”
Opening Borders
Carla herself crossed borders to bring artwork by some of the most notable Latin American artists to Southern California. Born and raised in El Salvador, with a Czech-Hungarian-Jewish heritage, and a passionately vibrant personality, Carla arrived in Laguna Beach by way of New York, where she had worked for 12 years in the creative department of a major advertising agency. When her husband tired of the Wall Street hustle and became “desperate to live near the ocean,” the couple headed to the West Coast, where Carla continued in her ad agency position, running 17 brands before hitting a wall and resigning in 2008.
And although Carla credits her advertising experience with helping her hone her creative credentials—noting that there are similarities between directing an ad campaign and curating a gallery, such as being able to separate the truly talented wheat from the “one-hit-wonder” chaff—her artistic interest didn’t sprout out of a field of chewing gum, pantyhose and gasoline commercials. Rather, it was Carla’s father, who died shortly before Salt Fine Art opened and to whom the gallery is dedicated, who supplied her inspiration.
Following World War II, during which he was confined in a Nazi prison camp, Pablo Tesak left Europe for Guatemala. On his way to Central America, he traveled through Chicago, where he spent five of the eight dollars in his pocket on two pieces of art. “He appreciated art in all its forms,” Carla says. “He had an original Renoir in his collection and next to it something he bought on the street—he didn’t care—he just wanted to feel something when he saw it.
“In our home in El Salvador art covers the walls. There is not an inch of empty wall space—and I do mean not an inch—it is crazy,” she laughs. “My father had two small rooms built to exhibit more art when he ran out of wall space in the house.” Carla grew up visiting shows, museums and art studios with her parents, noting that her mother also appreciates art.
“It takes two hands to clap,” she says. “My mother clapped too, but my father was the lead clapper.”
The artistic foundation that Carla was raised upon—80 percent of her father’s collection is from Latin American—opened doors into the art scene south of the border that would have otherwise remained closed. “I met great artists who would not normally have spoken to me as a new gallery owner,” she says.
An Inspirational Idea
A trip home to El Salvador to find artwork for her Laguna Beach house resulted in the idea of opening a gallery. “I went to see artist Marco Valencia and was telling him that ‘there are about 80 galleries’ where I live,” she recalls. “Then it hit me—there’s no Latin American gallery in the area; I can do something.”
And do something she did; Carla began planning her first show, which would feature Marco’s work. Educated as a chemical engineer and self-taught as an artist, Marco’s hyper-realistic, lush canvases of green landscapes are well-known in Latin America, Spain and elsewhere and have sold at Sotheby’s and other North American auction houses. The exhibit took place at Pure Laguna Beach last spring.
“Serious artists always want to show their artwork in the best place,” says Marco about the gallery and Southern California locale. “Laguna Beach with Salt Fine Art is an excellent mixture to promote professional Latin American artists. Carla, without any doubt, developed perfectly this magic idea.”
After this initial exhibit, other shows with other highly acclaimed Latin American artists followed, including one at Marion Meyer Contemporary Art featuring three of the artists presently at Salt Fine Art. By the time the gallery opened its doors in October 2009, “with a bang louder than any stick hitting a piñata,” according to Carla, it had gained the notice of experts in California’s art community, including the highly respected Long Beach Museum of Latin American Art, which was represented at the opening by curator Idurre Alonso. Several of the gallery’s artists are also in the museum’s permanent collection, including Mayra Barraza, recipient of a 2008 emerging artist award from MOLAA for her darkly compelling drawings that speak of urban violence in her Salvadorian homeland, and others.
“Carla has a very fine combination of artists in the gallery,” Idurre says. “Some are more socially oriented, others work with landscapes, some are emerging, and others are more established. It is important for emerging artists to show their works in other countries, and there is a problem in getting news about what is happening in Central America. The United States is an important market, and Carla is giving access to emerging artists to the mainstream and the U.S.”
Central American art has been relatively unknown in the United States because of the wars and poor political relationships with the United States in some of the countries, Carla asserts, noting that “Central American countries all have very important contemporary art scenes and of those, El Salvador’s is the strongest.
SIN TITULO / UNTITLED
oil on canvas
47.5 x 39 inches
Ideas Represented
The airy, light-filled gallery is “a beautiful space in which to share the current fresh and exciting Latin American art panorama,” says Mayra. “But I would add that California, Mexico and Central America have a shared history, and the gallery and artwork shown are part of the ongoing flow of ideas and cultural influences of that shared history. The gallery allows for that to become visible—to become a fully acknowledged experience.”
Visitors will find the gallery’s drama in its contrasts and variety of themes represented, which is a mix that Carla actively sought. The abstract, lush fruits of Panamanian Olga Sinclair are juxtaposed with El Salvadorian master realist Rafaela Varela’s portraits of poor children in boats navigating life’s turbulent waters. Warm watercolor flowers on clay board by dental surgeon and self-taught artist Octavio Arosemena, also of Panama, add poignancy to the darker works in the gallery, such as those of Ronald Moran. His frying pan and other pieces using common household objects, which are often used to beget domestic violence, are wrapped in white cotton as if to soften the blow. Colombian master Ana Mercedes Hoyos, whose works often focus upon African-descended fruit vendors in a Colombian village, is the most famous of the artists represented. A $95,000 bronze fruit sculpture of hers takes center stage in the gallery’s front room, but doesn’t upstage. An emerging artistic voice is El Salvador’s Jaime Izaguirre, who addresses the violence of street gangs imported from L.A. in his canvases of young barrio boys. Some of the gallery’s other artists include Luis Cornejo, whose paintings of fashion models with Mickey Mouse ears, tails and other cartoonish features challenge society’s notions of beauty; the surreal works of Jose Rodriguez; Guatemala’s master Moises Barrios; and emerging artist Ana Zamora of El Salvador.
The gallery provides art collectors and others “an exotic and magic journey through Latin American art,” believes Marco. “California has a great opportunity speaking in terms of this art market; Latin American Art has been rising these past years with new art proposals and is being well recognized by the auctions houses like Sotheby’s and Christie´s,” he continues.
“The gallery is important because through the artwork it showcases it is contributing to enrich creative and artistic dialogue within the art community,” Mayra says. “I believe an artist’s work becomes complete in the eyes of others. A new space to show artwork is always an exciting opportunity for that to happen! Having said that, I’m very excited about showing my artwork at Salt Fine Art [in March 2010] and having it echo in other peoples hearts and minds.”
“I believe in what I’m doing, and have been heartened and encouraged by the response the gallery has received,” Carla adds.
Visit Salt Fine Art at 1492 S. Coast Hwy, Unit 3;(949) 715-5554; saltfineart.com. The gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment and during First Thursday’s Art Walk (the first Thursday of each month) from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The current exhibition, featuring new works by master realists Marco Valencia and Rafael Varela, runs through Jan. 31. In addition to enjoying the artwork at the gallery, be sure to say hello to Baxter, Carla’s 83-pound golden retriever who often joins her there.