10w-30 (baseball player), 1993

Perry Vasquez
United States, born 1959
10w-30 (baseball player), 1993
recycled motor oil on paper
22 x 30 in
Museum purchase, Elizabeth W. Russell Foundation Fund
2002.22
© Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Perry Vasquez moved to San Diego in 1987 after finishing his studies at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Vasquez has taught art and graphic design at National University, University of California San Diego, and currently teaches at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. In 2001, Vasquez opened ICE Gallery, a venue for regional artists to show their work located in an old dry ice factory in San Diego. His works employ Mexican and American cultural imagery and unique new artistic techniques to tackle issues of political and social injustice, border issues, and issues of Chicano heritage.

Vasquez uses recycled motor oil to create prints whose influences range from Renaissance-era woodcuts to Meso-American iconography. In this series of works, Vasquez skillfully blends the themes and recognizable imagery of science fiction and border culture from the San Diego/Tijuana region. Vasquez calls his motor oil prints “motorography”—a reference to the monoprint technique he uses to create the works. Because the oil is recycled, the presence of sludge and deposits from an engine results in darker pigment and higher contrasting images. Vasquez is interested in the conceptual and physical transformation of motor oil from raw material to consumer product to industrial-waste product to print.

Discussion Questions

(For Grades 4-6)

Do you recognize any of the images Vasquez uses? What do they remind you of?

Does the material look like motor oil? Why or why not?

Why do you think the artist used recycled motor oil rather than new motor oil?