Ray Martín Abeyta Patricia Correia is pleased to present recent work by New York based Chicano painter Ray Martín Abeyta in his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. This new body of large scale paintings combines the cross-cultural and temporal aesthetics of many American and European forms of storytelling ranging from didactic Pre-Conquest Codices and Colonial Retablo paintings to twentieth century carnival poster art, to the modern hard-edge precision of Lowrider car detailing and the compositional layout of Ex-Voto paintings. With acute attention to pictorial detail, smooth brushwork, and handling of chiaroscuro, Abeyta is a contemporary master of Colonial Baroque painting. His stylized realism produces a range of textures from “supple flesh tones to lavish brocades to luminously gilded architectural moldings of floriated design.” Ray Martín Abeyta grew up in the historic northern New Mexico town of La Villa Real de Santa Cruz de la Cañada (established 1695). A graduate of University of New Mexico, Abeyta has traveled extensively through Latin America and Europe and now resides in Brooklyn, New York. He currently has a national traveling museum solo exhibition entitled, cuentos y encuentros (through 2007). Abeyta's work can be found in the following permanent collections: Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico; and the Center for the Performing Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico . Like the build up of fine varnish layers he applies to his paintings and his carefully placed registers and cartouches of text, Abeyta’s “Colonial Barrococo” creates a sophisticated visual encyclopedia of people and their histories, both real and mythological.