This is my follow-up to my 2007 article on Vargas. Boy, is he doing well.
Robert and Miyoko at Art Walk
Robert Vargas is gearing up for a solo show at Edgar Varela Fine Arts in April, but he has lost his muse. Miyoko, the octogenarian Japanese “High Priestess of Models,” is AWOL. She was the first figure model he ever drew, back at the LA County High School for the Arts. She was still living in LA after he moved back from New York three years ago, shortly after giving up his high-flying role as a talent buyer at the Conga Room.
Three years ago, he happened to see the spritely, shock-headed, mink-wearing model waiting to cross the road, and, leaving no room for ambiguity, he got her to visit his studio on a regular basis. She’s been posing for a portrait for the Varela show, one of the first carefully rendered paintings he will do of this life-long inspiration for what promises to be an intensely candid show. And just like she materialized out of the concrete and Beaux Art landscape, she is nowhere to be found.
It’s been almost two years since Citizen LA caught up with Robert Vargas, who turned 33 this April 1. Last May, we introduced you to a guy who was, in retrospect, preparing to explode across the map. He’s been showing in at least one LA gallery every month for the past year, was featured in a recent LA Times article about art in Downtown, got press from LA Weekly, FlavorPill, 944 magazine, THE magazine, and has his fingers crossed for a number of grants. If you were at this March’s Art Walk, you’d have been lucky to wriggle into the Regent Gallery to watch Vargas at work in his “studio for the night.”
“People visiting Art Walk know me from drawing portraits on the street. I like this interaction. I like bringing the gallery to the streets. When Tom Gilmore offered me this space, I thought it would be great to invite people into my studio while I work,” he said. “So I turned the Regent into my studio for the night.” Let’s just say, when Robert Vargas works, it is an event.
Inside the Regent, the fabulously fleshy April Flores, an erotic art model and star of Voluptuous Biker Babes, a Russ Meyer-esque film by her husband Carlos Batts, and LA art model royalty Marissa Gomez posed in the center of the gallery, with Vargas on his knees, genuflecting to the female form, his oil bars, overcome by the electrifying alchemy that happens when the world receives his marks.
This vibe wasn’t so much a raucous bacchanal, but respect. Aside from whispered remarks from the crowd, the whining guitar from the short film (that featured Vargas) playing on a loop in the window. “The only sounds I heard were the music and the sound of charcoal scratching on the paper,” he observed, a bit in awe of the attention and crowd. Trish Gilmore, wife of Tom, remarked to him after the show, “I couldn’t even walk in there it was so packed. All I could see was glimpses of you on your knees painting.” Her statement pretty much sums up how Vargas is evolving. Drawing bigger crowds while drawing during Art Walks and increasing the attention from people who can be instrumental in launching the man from our rumble of galleries into the international stratosphere, Vargas is coming up. It’s only fair, art has him on his knees. His life is for art. For the Edgar Varela show in April, his art will be about his life.
Never before has Varela, EVFA Gallery, opened his space to a Downtown LA artist for a solo show. The fact that the gallery owner has invited Vargas into his mid-career and emerging fray of national talent, bodes well. And if the Regent show, cobbled together in less than two days, is anything to go by, Varela’s show should be extraordinary. Vargas is tearing up his seams and letting it all spill out. “You’ll get to know me through this show. I’m challenging my techniques and approaches to charcoal and paint, but I’m going deeper with my subject matter. I’m looking into history, digging through growing up in Boyle Heights, my family, my loves, my influences. My first self-portrait. You’ll walk away from this show knowing so much more about me than, you know, ‘That guy who draws on his knees,’ or ‘the fastest draw in the West,’” he joked. “I’m looking into quilting and map-making,” he added, conspiratorially. Channeling his talent buying days, Vargas promises this show to be a true happening, but he’s keeping mum on the details.
All seems set for the show. But looking at the unfinished portrait of Miyoko leaning against his studio wall, I get the idea that even when a train steams ahead, the journey is never as sweet without a few screeches of otherwise the polished steel. Vargas, a pang of worry betraying his composure, said more to himself than Citizen LA, “She’ll turn up. I just have to wait.”
