Artist: Ricardo Corona
Exhibition: The Enchanted Borderlands
Media: Digital Illustration
Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Dr. Maxine Merlino Gallery
Website: https://www.ricardocoronaart.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ricardocoronaart/?hl=en
Ricardo Corona is an undergraduate student at the California State University of Long Beach. He is in his fourth year and her last semester at Long Beach. He is working toward finishing his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the School of Art’s Pre-Production program and is focusing on background art, visual development and building his own worlds. Corona enjoys going on hikes, listening to music, people watching, and creating cartography. Corona hopes to find himself working in working in visual development and creating background designs for films, television, or video games.
Corona had two pieces in the group exhibit. For one the pieces he used a cool color palette. It was a mixture of blues, purple, black and white. Many colors were overlapping and blended between one another. All of his work was done by digital illustration although it looked like it could have been painted. The white splatter looked as if it could have only came from paint. There was a recurring theme of the wild west and fantasy throughout all of the work. There was a rugged look in the room which the western decorations.
Corona decided to do a group exhibition with some friends that had very similar in style and context in their art. In his exhibition he wanted to do something that was rarely explored realm. This was the idea of bringing the wild west and fantasy together. Their story was set in a desert where all beings came to seek riches and glory. The artist wanted to transform the place into a pod of inspiration where they could utilize their Pre-Production insight into stages of new stories. The story itself is a western tale about greed. However, there is a fantasy twist on it with a magical crystal that everyone is trying to get their hands on. If the people from the corporation get to it first then they will threaten to break the balance on the Enchanted Borderlands. Corona is exploring ideas of greed, power, and creativity.
Corona did an amazing job conveying his message, and had beautiful artwork. I really enjoyed the take on a western fantasy since I have not seen it done before. I thought it was very clever of them to have the idea of the cooperation needing to be stopped from having power, because if they didn’t it would destroy balance in the world. This was a perfect example of not letting the government take advantage of our rights. I also thought the art itself was incredible with how it looked like a real painting even though it was all done digitally.
Shivani Patel 