Carlos Rosales-Silva: Art Truck

The Art Truck brings exciting and accessible contemporary art created by leading local and national artists directly to schools and community venues along the Wasatch Front. Engage in learning about our current Art Truck installation by Carlos Rosales-Silva, a contemporary artist from Austin, Texas whose paintings photos, sculptures and drawings investigate themes of borders, diversity and identity. Growing up in various parts of Texas, artist Carlos Rosales-Silva had to reconcile his own identity — half Mexican, half American Indian — with that of his larger-than-life state. "Texas history is all about mythmaking" said Rosales-Silva, 30, who's in Utah this month with an art exhibit on wheels in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art's Art Truck. Rosales-Silva, who is now living in New York but will forever associate himself with Texas, aims to examine identity issues of race and class and "filter them through formal art movements." He lists as examples Op Art (think Bauhaus) and Abstract Expressionism (Mark Rothko and others), as well as popular culture iconography. Take, for example, his "Texas Comanches" banner. It's a large red-and-white banner like one you would see in any high-school gymnasium. But this one reads, "Texas Comanches, State Champions, 1747-1865" the dates indicating how long the Comanches roamed Texas before white settlers ultimately defeated the native population. "A lot of my things have a sense of humor" Rosales-Silva said. "It's laughing to keep from crying. If you can make people laugh, you can get their attention." The Art Truck will be easy to identify as it drives around Salt Lake City: It will be wrapped in a 7-foot-high vinyl version of Rosales-Silva's diptych "Bringing Sexy Back." Exhibition held in the Art Truck.