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Javier Manrique and Danny Rosales

Danny Rosales and Javier Manrique capture an ephemeral sense of escape from boundaries in concrete form.

In San Francisco, construction sites are frequently populated by Latino workers. Rosales, a retired contractor, found beauty in these materials to create his sculptures. Manrique’s path to art was more traditional, having attended the National School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking in Mexico City and earned his Bachelor's degree at the San Francisco Art Institute.

In Javier Manrique’s abstract landscape paintings, one can imagine the paint splashing and dripping beyond the canvas onto surrounding surfaces. As Manrique describes it, "...space is stripped of its representative qualities and its components are synthesized into fields of color."

Similarly, Danny Rosales takes heavy construction materials—typically associated with weight and stability—to build sculptures that reach upward. Rosales points to the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, built by Sabato Rodia, as his primary inspiration. Recalling his first encounter with the landmark as a child, Rosales notes, "The idea of building a tower to the sky from scrap steel amazed me and has captured my imagination ever since."