The Aurora Public Art Commission’s 2014 Autumn Invitational opens Friday, Sept. 5, with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. at the David L. Pierce Art and History Center, 20 E. Downer Place.

The event is free and includes hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar and live music from John Ivan. The show runs through December 6. Regular gallery hours are noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Admission is also free to view the show.

The show’s six featured artists represent the breadth and diversity of styles in the contemporary national art scene:

Luis De La Torre has been heavily influenced in his art by his Texan birth and childhood in western Mexico. The imagery of his paintings and illustrations include many Mexican concepts of life and symbols of faith and power.

Alejandro Mazon’s mixed-media art of acrylics and found items appropriates the work of masters like Goya and Bosch and seeks dialogue with them across time, and in doing so connects Mazon to something familiar, remembered, or innate in his Spanish and Cuban roots.

Lazarus Nazario paints sociopolitical art that uses pop surrealism and magical realism. Nazario reclaims her connection to the past, with the vernacular of the present, to change the course of the future.

Alberto Paniaya focuses his work on the surface of biological objects, exploring their organic forms, colors and textures and translating the visual elements into a personal expression. His work has been exhibited in Chicago, Mexico and Vienna.

Domingo Parada believes that, as a painter, his work is the fruit of awareness of the world surrounding us. His abstract acrylic works concentrate heavily on the spectrum of color and geographic shapes.

Joseph Sentrock Perez is known for using bright colors, intense lettering and characters that grab the viewer’s attention in his acrylic and mixed-media work. He believes that art cannot deny its environment.

The Aurora Public Art Commission is a civic organization dedicated to the presentation of all forms of public art.  For more information on the Commission or the gallery visit the city of Aurora’s website at www.aurora-il.org, or call (630) 256-INFO (4636).

SOURCE: City of Aurora press release