Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to present Home team, a group exhibition featuring artworks that respond to the culture and pathos of sports. Artists Jim Adams, Hugo Crosthwaite, Karla Diaz, Aaron Maier-Carretero, Joshua Nazario Lugo, John M. Valadez, Jwan Yosef bring their international perspectives to explore themes of the body, vulnerability, spectacle, loss, and resilience through soccer, lucha libre, basketball, and more.

Jim Adams (b.1943, Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in White Rock, BC, Canada. Adams received his Master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1968) and a Bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Temple University (1965). Adams is included in Black in Canada and the Canadian who’s who. Adams’ works are included in the collections of The Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC; The Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC; Kenneth Montague / The Wedge Collection, Toronto, ON; Beth Rudin De Woody Collection, Palm Beach, FL; Tricon / The Berman Family, Toronto, ON; Tuskegee Airmen National Museum, Detroit, MI; International Women's Air and Space Museum, Cleveland, OH; The United States Air Force Collection, New York; Kozlekdesi Museum, Budapest, Hungary; as well as in numerous private collections internationally.

Hugo Crosthwaite (b.1971, Tijuana, BC, MX) lives and works in San Diego, CA, and Rosarito, BC, MX, and holds a BA in Applied Arts from San Diego State University, CA. Crosthwaite’s provocative drawings and paintings portray the many complexities of the MX-US border. Crosthwaite’s process combines abstraction with classically rendered imagery to unfold his personal vision in which reality, history, religion, and mythology collide. His mix of documentary-style draughtsmanship and abstraction, which may seem at times stranger than fiction, compels viewers to engage with the depth, nuance, and humanity of the real-life subjects he portrays. Crosthwaite’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Boca Raton Museum of Art, FL; University of Arkansas Art Gallery, Little Rock, AK; FEMSA Collection, Mexico City, DF, MX; CECUT/Centro Cultural Tijuana, BC, MX; and private collections internationally.

Karla Diaz (b.1976, Los Angeles, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working in painting, installation, video, performance, and social practice. She received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003 and a BA from California State University Los Angeles in 1999. Using narrative to question identity, institutional power, and explore memory, her socially engaged practice is grounded in collaboration and inclusive discourse with diverse communities. Diaz's work is included in the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA; Inhotim Museum, Brumahinto, Brazil; AltaMed Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Armando Duron Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Faye Hunter and Hugh Davies Collection, La Jolla, CA; Eileen Harris Norton Collection, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Karla Diaz lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Aaron Maier-Carretero (b.1987, Silver Spring, MD) is a Latinx visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has exhibited at the Queens Museum, NY; Sculpture Center, NY; The National Arts Club, New York City; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Phillips Collection, DC; The University of Maryland Art Gallery; the Washington Project for the Arts; and others. His work is held in the collections of the Phillips Collection; the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in Washington, DC; The University of Maryland Art Gallery, College Park, MD; the Art Bank Collection, DC; The Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; The Collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody / The Bunker Artspace, West Palm Beach, Fl; and numerous other private collections.

Joshua Nazario Lugo (b. 2001, San Germán, PR) lives and works in Isabela, Puerto Rico. He is a selftaught multidisciplinary artist exploring identity, personal memory, and popular culture within Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Nazario Lugo began his art practice by creating collages using skateboard magazines. Immersed in the self-taught, DIY principles of skate culture, he shifted to painting and sculpture. Nazario blends personal history with broader cultural narratives, frequently incorporating his passion for sports and autos with the everyday reality of life on the islands. By juxtaposing locally sourced materials like concrete, wood, metal, and found objects with symbols of luxury, he creates metaphors for social standing, success, and competition. His use of logo-based visual language playfully collapses the distinctions between domestic space, capitalism, and cultural memory, creating a "visual diary" of memory and resilience.

John M. Valadez (b.1951, Los Angeles, CA) is a painter, muralist, and socially engaged photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. A trailblazer of the early Chicano Arts Movement in the 1970s and 80s, John M. Valadez’s work has come to define an iconography of Chicano experience in the city by catalyzing its changing dynamics and reconstructing a mythical allegory that speaks to an alternate vision. Lauded for his groundbreaking realist paintings, in which "high art" techniques are radically applied to everyday, urban, and working-class scenes of Los Angeles, Valadez is one of the first 20thcentury postwar Latinx painters to portray social commentary with dignity.

Jwan Yosef (b.1984, Ras al-Ayn, SY) is a Syrian-born, Swedish-patriated visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Yosef holds an MFA from Central Saint Martins, London, UK, and a BFA from Konstfack University College of Arts, Stockholm, SE, where he studied plastic arts. Yosef's works queer modernist principles of abstraction, critically interposing the activities of concealing and exposing. His tactical use of abstraction, in this case with cropped images of soccer players after scoring goals, releases entendres and challenges viewers to break from implicit biases.