THIS IS BERMUDEZ PROJECTS!
10TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY
2011-2021
May 29 through June 26, 2021

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 5, 6-8 pm

In late May of 2011, 150 people took two creaky elevators eight stories above downtown LA’s Garment District and crammed themselves into 360 sweaty square feet for the first exhibit at a new gallery: Bermudez Projects, the brainchild of Julian Bermudez.

The crowd had a great time, swigging free wine and talking art and ideas. And while only a handful of people bought art, netting the gallery a princely $240 that night, Bermudez’s idea – people deserve good art – worked!

Today, despite all the challenges of the last decade, including a certain global pandemic that suddenly halted the gallery’s modus operandi, the idea is still working. With a diverse cadre of artists showing their work in a bright modern building in the historic Cypress Park neighborhood of Northeast LA, Bermudez Projects is one of the LA art world’s most unlikely success stories.

To celebrate, gallerist Julian Bermudez has curated “This Is Bermudez Projects!,” an exhibit of 35 works by 15 artists that reflect ten years of accomplishments:

  • Rare prints in John S. Rabe’s hyper-saturated helicopter print series nod to the first show, and the gallery’s commitment to reflecting the real Los Angeles;
  • A small installation featuring sought-after and evocative miniature Southeast LA houses by Ana Serrano, paintings by Nanci Amaka and April Bey, Erynn Richardson’s watercolor and gold-leaf “icon paintings,” and Amanda Beckmann’s collage/video speak to Bermudez Projects’ support of women artists;
  • Works by Yolanda González and Cindy Santos Bravo, from “Ghetto Gloss: The Chicana Avant-Garde,” demark Bermudez Projects’ participation in two (!) of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time events, a remarkable achievement for a fledgling gallery;
  • Carlos Almaraz’s monumental diptych silkscreen, “Mystery in the Park,” and works from Enrique Castrejon’s “Intimate Embraces” series, underscore the gallery’s support of Latinx and LGBTQ+ artists long before it was de rigueur;
  • And, a collaborative sculpture by Kellan Shanahan and Nanci Amaka, along with paintings by Emmanuel Crespo pays tribute the gallery’s SPACELAND Biennial, an often unsettling exploration of LA’s future … with some startling predictive parallels to the pandemic year.

Bermudez Projects hasn’t confined itself to shows at the NELA gallery. Julian Bermudez curated the first exhibit of Chicano art at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington D.C. and the first exhibit of Chicano art at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. He also curated and toured an exhibit of Chicano art through five cities in Mexico. And he curated “Black Art Now,” presenting young Black artists at Southern California Public Radio’s Crawford Family Forum … in 2012!

Bermudez, who has lived for twenty years in the same neighborhood as his gallery, says, “Our commitment to providing equity for traditionally underrepresented artists has been the gallery’s ethos since its inception, and we are expanding our scope to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts with our dedicated projects space and thematic group exhibitions.” But through it all, Bermudez Projects’ commitment to the public remains: the art needs to be good art that’s vibrant, personal, stimulating, relatable, inclusive, and affordable.

As Bermudez says, when asked why he’s stuck with this for ten years, “I know art can change the world.”