Harley Cortez: L.A.’s Latest Art Star

Harley Cortez swashbuckled into lunch one day earlier this summer.  We met for Club Sandwiches at Cavatina – the celeb-laden, al fresco ”commissary” of the iconic Sunset Marquis Hotel in West Hollywood. The buzzed-about California modern artist of the moment sauntered in radiating Los Feliz cool and looking like an exotic version of Clark Gable in a custom-designed mid-waist white jacket paired with vintage Levis and a fancy pair of ostrich leather like Italian boots.

“I dressed up for you,” he quipped as we sat for this Hollywood tete-a-tete.  It has not escaped the astute zeitgeist that Harley Cortez has already been anointed as ‘canonized” as Cool by none other than Dries van Noten.  The master of intellectual and detailed design and one of fashion’s most significant creative forces, especially revered in Los Angeles. And if Dires says you are IN– consider that a jump to your artistic valuation. This past February – Harley Cortez staged a three-week live installation at the behest of Dries at his iconic store on LaCienega in West Hollywood. ”Dries picks every artist he works with and is very selective.  So it was an incredible honour to work with them.  I gave them a painting for one of their rooms that pay homage to the village where my mother was born. In fact, the painting has the soil from that Guatemala village to my life and the metaphor for texture.

He lives and paints out of his studios in Echo Park of East Los Angeles, and the canvases of Harley Cortez have been described as delicate and elegant with the grace of the primal Basquiat ethos of the 20th Century.  But in this post-millennial 21st Century American art, the artist will explain this.  ”I have been exploring and experimenting so much and finally found a confident voice in the newest work. It speaks to so many things, but I find it incredibly refreshing regarding an expressionistic language that taps into my ancestral memory.”

He was born in 1979, a multi-disciplinary artist, musician and filmmaker who actually went to high school in Astoria, Queens, to now end up being one of the darlings of the contemporary L.A. art scene. Jamiroquai’s ‘Cosmic Girl’ is wafting through the fabulous vibe of the Cavatina as Cortez peers over his hombre oversized lunettes a-la-Ari-Onassis and ponders the question as to why he’s suddenly become a favourite of Mexico City collectors.  ”Mexico City is one of the most creative and compelling markets.  It has always been one of the most incredible places on earth.  For this artist, it’s all about layered richness, and I feel an inherent connection to

Mexico and my unique journey and reflection must strike a notion with my collectors in Mexico City.  ”But I grew up in New York City and Los Angeles, and so I live in a constant dichotomy of craving a metropolitan life, but I also think my showing at the prestigious Jumex Museum in Mexico City has led to my growing fan base there.”

As we discuss his technique, the haze of his elegant brushstrokes, sometimes surreal but never morose– a modern masterpiece of the Harley Cortez oeuvre would be the museum-worthy acquisition of his “Las Mananantias.”

Besides music and painting — what would be your most impressive – hidden talent?  The artist is quizzed as dessert arrives, and another Hollywood celebrity (Keifer Sutherland) saunters to take up residence in a villa next door to the Cavatina of the Sunset Marquis.   ”I’m a filmmaker, and it’s something I’ve kind of always done. I’m working on my new short film, Jèan, about migrants going through the desert together. It’s a magical realist story— it’s extraordinary.  I’m also a poet and have written a volume of works (accompanying an instrumental album) called–  AN INVENTORY OF MEMORY.

And a boy born to a single immigrant mother from Guatemala who went to high school in Astoria, Queens and is now one of the coolest, buzzed-about Creatives in the 21st Century Los Angeles scene. Could you describe your work?  ”I like to use the term– lyrical abstraction. Painting is a spiritual act.  For me, painting is the most significant art form for the creator.”