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José Villalobos

“The Same Air we Breathe, El Mismo Aire Que Respiramos,” 2025

Still image from recorded performance

Image courtesy of artist

Jason Tanner Young

“cross-cut,” 2026

Wood (poplar and soft maple)

20 x 6 x 3″

Image courtesy of artist

Space One Eleven presents

José Villalobos

Jason Tanner Young

An opening reception will be held Thursday, February 19, from 5:30 to 7:00 pm

February 23 – April 17, 2026,
at 2407 2nd Avenue North, Downtown Birmingham.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, and by appointment.
Admission is free and open to the public.

“Navegando la Masculinidad de la Frontera / Navigating the Border’s Masculinity“
José Villalobos

José Villalobos is a multidisciplinary artist exploring identity, queerness, and cultural heritage through sculpture, performance, and installation. Growing up between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, he confronts the conflicts between tradition, faith, and sexuality within Mexican and American cultures. Rooted in personal experience, his practice challenges machismo and the violence of assimilation, transforming materials and symbols to reclaim queer visibility. Villalobos has exhibited nationally and internationally and is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant. Recently he became a Trellis Art Fund Stepping Stone Fellow. His work affirms resilience, tenderness, and the power of self-expression within queer and borderland communities.

For the exhibition “Navegando la Masculinidad de la Frontera / Navigating the Border’s Masculinity,” Villalobos presents a collection of new and past works that create a dialogue about masculinities within Norteño culture, its subcultural predecessors, and related historical movements. Villalobos’ aesthetic often combines the rugged iconography of the West (boots, cowboy hats, leather, ropes) with the flamboyance, glitter, and vulnerability of queer expression. The result is a powerful tension: the imagery of strength, control, even violence (e.g., rodeo, bull-taming) juxtaposed with fragility, costume play, and critique of the structures that define “manhood.”

“see saw sawn”
Jason Tanner Young

Jason Tanner Young received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Texas at Tyler in 2008.  He is currently an Associate Professor of Art and director of the Sculpture concentration at the University of Montevallo.  Young previously worked at Ohio University, where he taught courses in Sculpture + Expanded Practice as well as the Foundations Department.

He was awarded the Pentaculum Scholarship in Woodworking to participate in the week-long residency, Spring Pentaculum, at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (2022).  At the University of Montevallo he received a Summer Stipend for Pre-Tenured Faculty (2020), and he has also received a Teaching and Scholarly Projects Grant (2022).

Young shows his work extensively, and has been included in exhibitions at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile, AL), Lowe Mill Arts and Entertainment (Huntsville, AL), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg, TN), The Sculpture Center (Cleveland, OH), Axis Gallery (Sacramento, CA), Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati, OH) the Young Sculptors Competition at Miami University (Miami, OH), the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, AL), Visual Art Exchange (Raleigh, NC), Evansville Museum (Evansville, IN), and Rosalux Gallery (Minneapolis, MN) among many others.