Tacos, Olmec stone heads and Day of the Dead festivities are among the motifs of “Destinos,” Pyramid Atlantic Art Center’s survey of contemporary Mexican printmaking. But the 25 illustrators selected by Edgar Reyes, a Guadalajara-born local artist, also draw from American, British and especially Japanese pop culture. Many of the prints are risographs, made with a low-cost process developed by a Tokyo company, and one participant has even adopted an eccentric Japanese pseudonym, Ketsueki Koibito (“blood sweetheart”).
The stylistically versatile Koibito is among the most playfully audacious of the contributors. The artist confines a Teletubby within a threatening circle of flame, places a crown of thorns on a clown’s head and updates a traditional Jesus with a Hello Kitty eye mask that includes the cartoon cat’s trademark bow. Abraham Mascorro Morales’s linocut of an elaborately decorated cowboy is all in close shades of gray, which nearly disguises that one of the decorations depicts Pikachu, the electric-mouse Pokémon. Gibrán Turón depicts the Grim Reaper astride a winged cartoon horse that’s pink, one of the most common hues in these candy-colored pictures.
The prints can be as simple as Zyanya Arellano’s outline drawing of an angel cat, outfitted with halo, wings and a familiar-looking pink bow. Equally uncomplicated if more symmetrical is Mary Lechuga’s visual ode to a taco, accented in yellow and, yes, pink. But the selection also features Nando Murio’s expressionist portrait of the artist as a young smudge, his face barely there, and Asdl Manzano’s bare-breasted Madonna, her body modeled and shadowed to yield a realistic fleshiness.
The show’s affordably priced prints are not limited editions, and many are in fact individual pages from zines and comics. Produced by five publishers, most founded since 2017, the artworks share a pulpy vitality and an appealing irreverence. The artists may borrow from Japanese anime, American comics and British TV, but their sensibilities are distinctively their own.
Destinos Through Aug. 18 at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, 4318 Gallatin St., Hyattsville. pyramidatlanticartcenter.org. 301-608-9101.
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