It took fifty pounds of dirt for Carlos Jaramillo to build his small monument to the charrería.

The photographer, based now in Los Angeles, has situated the display on the third floor of an anonymous ex-warehouse at the tip of Ridgewood, inside a gallery that’s been a lynchpin for what some say is a thriving local art scene. The pile of dirt on the ground indicates that Tierra Del Sol might be the most ambitious project yet showcased at Selenas Mountain, a gallery that has always proven remarkably capable of doing a lot inside of a small white box at the fraying edges of the gentrifying neighborhood. Standing inside the imported dirt affords a visceral vantage point to view Jaramillo’s impressionistic takes on a cultural tradition that Mexico once named its national sport. 

At the center of things is one of Jaramillo’s more recent accomplishments – a massive inkjet print titled “Paso de le Muerta #1.” Surrounded in a frame made of leather, the image is a document of a climatic scene in one of these charrerías, which Jaramillo took at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The outdoor area was explicitly built for the sport in the 1970s and its longstanding popularity testifies to the sport’s cultural capital. In 2000, a Los Angeles Times writer wrote that the arena “is to Mexican regional music what Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry is to country music.” Names familiar to the radio and cultural format perform regularly there like Jenni Rivera and the late Juan Gabriel. (Gabriel, one of the best-selling singers in Mexican history, would go there to squish “through the pungent rodeo mud in his fancy patent leather shoes,” according to this account.)