Biography

Arturo Ernesto Romo-Santillano was born in Los Angeles, California in 1980. His artwork, mostly mixed media and installation works, have been exhibited internationally, most recently in the exhibition “Phantom Sightings” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Romo-Santillano’s subject matter is diverse and eccentric, being influenced by anything from conspiracy theory and alchemical texts to junkyards, sprawl architecture, terrorism and churches. An overarching theme in his work is fluency and its folly, in that he sees his work as a type of trickster-translator to an often unintelligible and turbulent world. He also is a product of an industrial, urban environment and much of his work, from murals to trinkets, reflects this aesthetic.

Not restricted to working in galleries and museums, Romo-Santillano often stages works on the streets with performances and street posters.

In the Spring of 2008, Romo-Santillano began work on a project for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The piece, given the working title “Rended House Drops Façade”, gave form to the idea of “meaning on meaning in meaning through meaning”, a study and celebration of the diluvial architecture of the urban mindscape that informs much of Romo-Santillano’s body of work. 

Romo-Santillano attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, from where he received his Bachelors degree in Fine Arts. He continues his studies on the streets of East Los Angeles, which feed into an online guide to East LA (www.elaguide.org) created with writer Sesshu Foster.