‘Controversy’ takes familiar subjects in new directions

ARTURO SANDOVAL’S ‘STRAIGHT JACKET’
What is “Controversy”? What’s controversial? Depends. Ray Vasquez, mild-mannered gallery manager, etc., etc., thought telling someone else might be too, well—you know. And because someone else was happy to decide, that was it.
“We just left that to the hands of the artists,” Vasquez says while leading [...]

Freewheeling with painter Robert Maldonado

ROBERT MALDONADO’S “PUBLIC MASK”
I like artists before they’ve been hit with wealth and taste, before they’re, like Joni Mitchell, used to that clean white linen and fancy French cologne. I like artists when they’re maybe kind of silly, and everything, for them, is the shock of the new. This is especially [...]