Art swap: That 50-cent thrift-store painting? It might be a Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia original
By Carolina A. Miranda
August 14, 2015
An installation view of Hurtado’s “Segundas” series at CB1 Gallery. The works are inspired by paintings the artist finds in thrift stores.
Like many artists, Lorenzo Hurtado Segovia makes work for galleries and museums. But unlike many artists, he regularly gives his work away to thrift shops.
For five years, the L.A.-based artist has been represented by CB1 Gallery downtown, where his pieces sell for anywhere from $750 for a print to $35,000 for wall-sized works. Earlier this year he had a survey of his works in a solo exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College.
But for roughly a decade he has also been making work explicitly to donate to thrift stores — a selection of which is on view in the rear office gallery at CB1.
“There is this fetish for original art — the desire to have the original,” he explains of the project. “I thought, well, maybe there’s something interesting here. Maybe I can distribute the original, but in a way that’s irregular.”
His series named “Segundas” (Seconds) plays with this art world fetish as well as with the overheated nature of the art market, where sale price is always everything. For all Hurtado knows, his work could be sitting at a Goodwill in Van Nuys with a price tag of 50 cents.