Tyler Park Presents and The Fulcrum Press are pleased to announce Perris, a group exhibition co-organized and viewable at both galleries featuring the work of Hiroshi Clark, Cameron Crone, Ryan Flores, Aaron Garber-Maikovska, Jim Isermann, Cara Rae Joven, Ravi Jackson, Olivia Leiter, Mark Mcknight, Pau S. Pescador, Ryan Perez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Kaari Upson, and Andrea Zittel. On view from February 18 through March 19, 2022.

If you highlight the Inland Empire on a map, it looks like a fairly large state within Southern California. The I.E, as it's affectionately known unless you live outside of it, begins 60 miles east of Los Angeles and spans 27 thousand square miles bounded by empty deserts and alpine peaks. Originally home to over 100 distinct native communities including the largely recognized Tongva, the Yuhaviatam/Maarenga'yam (Serrano) the Payómkawichum (Luiseño), and the Kizh and Cahuilla, the region is now populated by over 4.9 million people, one in five being an immigrant, and three in five stuck in traffic somewhere between the disputed borders of Pomona, Palm Springs, and Rainbow.

I arrived in California from Florida as a nine-year-old, with my red Reeboks, plaid blue flannel buttoned to my yet-to-drop Adam’s apple, and one pant leg rolled up cause ‘Ladies Love Cool J.’ The principal at my elementary school pulled me aside and said if you don’t know what set you claim, you better set your ass down ‘fore mamas gonna knock you out. He recommended I stick to the I.E’s neutral color of orange to avoid getting clapped, and he didn’t mean a standing ovation.

Murrieta at the time was coming out of its past as a small ranching town. It grew exponentially through tract housing developments, which were advertised to families fleeing Los Angeles’ urban areas upon the uprisings in '92. The area where I first lived is hardly recognizable now a few decades later. Cobblestones replaced the dirt streets, the liquor store is now the Country Market, and the post office, the last remaining building from the late 1800s, was demolished because its Western false front architecture was deemed not authentic enough by the urban planners. I think if the Rancheros were to settle here today, the Mayor announced, holding a giant pair of red scissors, they would have thought stucco looked more better than the adobe. He chopped through the plastic ribbon and unveiled the new urban renewal project that consisted of one Thai fusion restaurant, three nail salons, Jackeline’s Paint and Sip, and Nikki’s antique shop curated with items inherited from her family’s estate that she either sandblasted or splashed painted then placed six feet apart at 90-degree angles. The town not only had the smog which crept in the year before, it now had the culture to put itself on the map and proclaim itself a city at last!

With continual growth and suburbanization, the I.E has had to stay innovative in response to the nation's call to combat climate change. Refusing to drop its Mediterranean status, stating ‘to remain hopeful in the face of extinction is better than change that would erase a culture, built on motorcars, motorcycles, motorboats, and Motorola.’ If you’ve never been there you may not know that with over ten thousand miles of roads throughout the region, there’s not one surface street. Driveways are referred to as on and off ramps so when you park in front of your house, you technically have abandoned your vehicle in the middle of the freeway, If you’re lucky to be able to afford a home in one of nearly one-hundred conjoining cities. After purchase, you’re handed a jug of engine coolant, and a court document that states the law requires you to commute at least 66 miles a day. This may seem like a contradiction to climate activism, but call it an ode to the old Mother Road and all the amateur American highway engineers that have been experimenting with the wrong way to make interchanges since the route's closure in 1985. Heritage runs thick through the I.E. You’d be a fool to ask your high school bestie while slamming a Natty Ice for the first time in twenty years, if Route 66 really did run through his backyard or if he stole the sign. The answer is both. But as the weathered voice of Art Laboe sails through the speakers in your friend's pickup truck that’s parked in his lawn to avoid getting towed, dedicating for the sixth time of the evening Always and Forever from Angel Eyes to Smiley, I miss you baby and can’t wait to be in your arms, you’ll know exactly why you left all those years ago, and why you always come back.

- Dav Bell (Visitor Welcome Center)