the BOSTON globe
May 21, 2008

The elements beyond our control
By Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

Raul Gonzalez: Chingasos ‘El C.V. cuento historico’
At: The New England Gallery of Latin American Art, 184 Cottage St., East Boston, through June 5. 617-418-5838

Lush, sad characterization
Sheer accumulation powers Raul Gonzalez's installation about a mythic Mexican boxer at the New England Gallery of Latin American Art. Gonzalez has covered the gallery walls and ceiling in paintings, drawings, and sculptural doodads that map out the story of El Chango Verde (Green Monkey), a fighter on his last legs.

Gonzalez has a talent for graphic, muscular comic-book style depictions, which he peppers with metaphors, dream images, and potent tastes of Mexican culture. There's no story line here, but all the details - a mural of a cockfight, cacti painted on old washboards, a drawing of a trio of women who threaten to sap the boxer of his virility - merge into a lush, sad characterization.

El Chango Verde, also called El C.V., has no opponents in Gonzalez's portrayal of him, but different images of the boxer (in one, he has a unicorn's horn - or perhaps a swelling, the result of a punch to the skull - while in another, he's the Christ child in Mary's arms) suggest that he is, in some way, both his own champion and his own challenger.

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