Football fanaticism has overrun these streets. If you're not glued to the set every day or screaming from the stands, surely someone close to you is torturing you with their World Cup obsession.
Legendary artist Jorge R. Gutierrez, aka "Super Macho," known for his colorful, folk art-influenced paintings and animated works for the screen like "The Book of Life" and "Maya and the Three," is pouring his own futbol fever into a new gallery show called "FÚTBOL! FÚTBOL!! FÚTBOL!!!," which opens this Friday at La Luz De Jesus Gallery within Soapplant/Wacko in Los Feliz.
The manic name of the show alone communicates the pitched, unquenchable mania soccer fans feel for the sport and the vibrations rocking futbol fans through the world right now. In his new work, the Mexico City-born, Tijuana-raised, CalArts alum offers vividly illustrated portraits of some of soccer's biggest icons, from a wide-eyed, lion-maned El Pibe to a skull-eyed Cuauhtémoc Blanco, and even an ecstatic Mickey Mouse with a Quetzalcoatl face tat decrying Mexico's suffering in the World Cup.
Excited for Friday's show, we peppered Guiterrez with our penetrating/probably annoying questions about what fueled Futbol! Futbol!! Futbol!!!! which runs through August 2 at La Luz De Jesus.
Hi Jorge. You've said you have a “hilariously painful and deeply passionate love affair with the goddamned World Cup.” Where does it hurt?
The pain is delicious! Being Mexican has made me comfortable with this. Every four years, I, along with countless others, truly believe this is our year. We carry this impossible, masochistic optimism in our bones. And then the futbol gods remind us that hope is both beautiful and absolutely ridiculous. The heartbreak becomes part of our folklore. No Era Penal isn’t just a phrase; it’s a generational wound. And yet, we always come back for more.
And what do you love the most about the World Cup?
What I love most is that the World Cup can transform ordinary mortals into myths. For one month, the whole planet agrees to dream together. Heroes are born, villains are created, miracles happen, and millions of strangers become one giant, screaming family. And as we all know, no one, and I mean no one, will love you and hurt you more than your family. There is nothing else like it.
Did futbol come before making art in your life or after?
I honestly don't remember fútbol and art not being both part of my life. I played as a kid in Mexico City and later Tijuana, so futbol wasn’t a hobby; it was the weather. It was everywhere. It was at family gatherings, school, and neighborhood games, television screaming in the background, my entire family losing their minds over a goal.
I was drawing diablos, skeletons, and luchadores at the same time I was worshipping Pele, Hugo Sánchez, and Maradona. In my mind, there was never a separation between art and fútbol. The players already felt like comic-book heroes, saints, tricksters, and devils. I just eventually started painting them the way I always saw them.
In fact, back in 1994, as an animation school freshman, my roommate David Vegezzi, an incredible designer from Argentina, and I started the first, and last, CalArts soccer team: "The CalArts Flying Monkeys." We lost every single game and had the time of our lives. Looking back, I think that perfectly captures my relationship with the beautiful game: endless optimism, glorious failure, and pure joy.
Some people think artists and obsessive sports fan might not live in the same bodies. What would you say?
To me, many artists and sports fans are obsessed with the exact same thing: stories.
We love mythology, ritual, symbols, heroes, villains, costumes, chants, impossible dreams, and devastating tragedy. The World Cup is basically the greatest real-time performance art piece on Earth. Every four years, humanity collectively agrees to participate in a giant, beautiful, emotional opera.
The difference is that one group paints, sings, or films the myths, while the other screams in a stadium or at the television, sings at the top of their lungs, and wears face paint. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you're both.
Why did you pick these specific players to paint for Futbol! Futbol! Futbol!?
I chose the players who made me feel something magical. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Some are Mexican legends like Hugo Sánchez, Jorge Campos, Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Chicharrito, El Matador, and Memo Ochoa, the saints and, many times, sinners of my personal mythology.
Others, like Pelé, Maradona, Messi, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Beckham, Mbappé, Valderrama, and Higuita, became global folk heroes to me.
These are the faces that lived in my head for decades. The people who made me laugh, cry, scream, believe, and occasionally question the existence of a loving creator. At the end of the day, I didn't paint the greatest players of all time. I painted the ones who never left me.
What are the influences behind your painting style?
My "style" is a giant, chaotic pozole stew: Mexican folk art, church retablos, rural street murals, Day of the Dead imagery, Mesoamerican art and sculpture, Mexico City pop art, Tijuana punk-rock flyers, anime, classic cartoons, crappy tattoos, and children’s drawings.
I don’t want realism. I want funny, emotional mythology.
I want these players to feel like saints painted on church walls, ancient demigods carved into stone, or cartoon characters from some forbidden soccer movie. The World Cup lives in memory, and memory is weird, emotional, exaggerated, and deeply personal. That’s what I’m trying to paint.
What’s up with the birds on the players' heads?
To me, the birds are little spirits of chaos and hope.
In Mexican folk art, birds often carry messages between realms. In these paintings, they’re witnesses. They’re fans. They’re ancestors. They’re the tiny, noisy chorus commenting on the madness of the game. They're the fans we all become: loud, emotional, superstitious, judgmental, and eternally hopeful.
Honestly, I also just love drawing them. Every painting becomes more alive when a bunch of weird little chismoso birds are hanging around judging everybody.
How is an obsession with fútbol different from other obsessions? To what degree is it a private, solitary obsession versus one that depends on a communal experience or shared passion?
To me, futbol only truly exists as a collective hallucination.
You can love movies alone. You can read books alone. You can paint alone. But futbol demands community.
The joy only becomes joy because millions of other people are feeling it at the exact same moment. The heartbreak only becomes legendary because everyone remembers exactly where they were when it happened.
At the same time, it’s incredibly private. Every fan carries their own sacred wounds and impossible hopes. We all have our own personal mythology. It’s the most communal form of loneliness I’ve ever experienced.
Do you have a favorite portrait in this series? One that you enjoyed painting the most or that gives you a certain reaction every time you see it?
Maradona is probably the big one. I have now painted him the most.
I was at Estadio Azteca during Mexico '86. I watched him become both a villain and a god in real time. No human being should have that much mythology attached to them, and yet somehow he earned it. Painting him felt more like creating a religious icon.
I also absolutely adore René Higuita. The hair, the madness, the scorpion kick, the complete refusal to behave like a normal goalkeeper. He felt like rebellious performance art disguised as an athlete.
And, of course, Jorge Campos remains one of the coolest human beings to ever wear a uniform. The man looked like he designed himself.
What drove you to include pop-culture and iconic cartoon characters in the show, and how do these non-players, like Mickey Mouse, resonate in the series?
The World Cup mascots and cartoon characters are just as important as the players to me.
For kids, sometimes the mascot is your first gateway into the mythology. Juanito, Pique, Naranjito, World Cup Willie, Zakumi, Footix, and now Merlin. They’re bizarre little ambassadors from different eras of our collective memory. They’re weird, wonderful, and often completely crazy-looking.
The Mickey-inspired pieces are about global pop culture colliding with futbol fever. The World Cup doesn't respect boundaries between high art, low art, commerce, religion, nationalism, or childhood nostalgia. Everything gets thrown into the blender.
The result is this giant, beautiful mess that belongs to everybody. Just like bootleg Mickeys. Sorry, Disney, they belong to us now. Once an image becomes part of our collective imagination, it takes on a life of its own. It stops belonging to a corporation and starts belonging to the people who love it, reinterpret it, and keep it alive.
The name Futbol! Futbol!! Futbol!!!! beautifully encapsulates the absolute mania for soccer going on around us in L.A. and the world right now. Were you considering other names?
Oh, absolutely. I had some very questionable titles, like "Pinche World Cup" or "You Will Never Win And Love It."
But none of them felt right.
Then I remembered a Manu Chao chant from "Santa Maradona," a 1994 song from Casa Babylon, the last Mano Negra album. And boom, that was it!
That chant sounded like someone losing their mind in the middle of a game. The title had to feel like a prayer, a battle cry, and a nervous breakdown all at once. Three exclamation points felt mandatory. The World Cup deserves maximum melodrama: pure madness, pure love.
If some sort of cruel god forced you to choose between only having soccer or only having art, what would you choose?
This question is ETERNAL PAIN!!!
My answer is art. Absolutely art. And then I would probably spend the rest of my life making paintings about how much I miss futbol.
Art is the thing that allows me to process the joy, pain, absurdity, and mythology of being alive. It lets me transform heartbreak into something hopeful.
Thankfully, the gods have been kind enough not to force that choice. So I’ll keep doing both: screaming at the games like a lunatic and then painting the experience afterward. And the pain, the eternal and excruciating pain, I will embrace with open arms and the biggest of grins.
"FUTBOL! FUTBOL!! FUTBOL!!!" ~ July 3-August 2 ~ La Luz De Jesus, 4633 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90027
This is a sponsored article from La Luz de Jesus gallery.
