Photos:: Worth a border crossing: An exhibition that shows the state of contemporary art in Baja

There are collectors who acquire art only after consulting with an advisor, more interested in financial gain than aesthetics or a personal point of view.

That’s not Alonso Elías. The Mexican businessman has quietly built a collection of more than 200 artworks that take the U.S.-Mexico border as their point of inspiration. And the vast majority are by artists from Baja California.

“He didn’t do this with an intermediary,” says Alejandro Espinoza, an independent curator who helped organize a new exhibition in Tijuana of works from Elias’ collection. “There was no gallery, no dealer. He would go to spaces and see the work and he’d research pieces that were most representative of the region.”

Several dozen works from Elías’ collection — formally known as the Elías-Fontes Collection — are now on view at El Cubo gallery at the Tijuana Cultural Center (known as CECUT) and they are worth crossing the border to see.

Consider a hanging wall sculpture in the shape of a flag, produced with steel similar to that of the border wall, by Marco Ramírez (known as “Erre”). It’s a piece that winks at the paintings of Jasper Johns.

Or the photographs of Tania Candiani, which show the ephemeral junk sculptures she has constructed along the international dividing line.

The works on view are a good primer to the art-making that has gone on in the border region over the past decade. And while many of the works take the border as their subject, other themes emerge too: gender, landscape, pop culture and the broader border cultural ecosystem, a place where the American and the Mexican meet.

“It’s a state of the art of contemporary art production in Baja,” says Espinoza. “It shows that the artists are working in global, universal terms. The issue of the border is present, but there are deeper, more meditative themes that are explored about what it means to live alongside the border.”

In other words, this is art you simply aren’t going to see anywhere else, a vital window into Mexican border culture. And good reason to spend an afternoon in Tijuana.

“Stripes and Fence Forever (Homage to Jasper Johns),” 2014, by Marco Ramirez, also known as “Erre.” The piece plays with border iconography as much as it does with art history — nodding to Johns’ famous flag paintings.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

“Transmutante,” 2012, a sculpture by Tijuana artist Alejandro Zacarías, who is known for transforming bits of industrial scrap into multimedia works.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

Paintings by Charles Glaubtiz on view at CECUT: “Perros Calientes,” right, from 2003, and “Why Am I So Greedy?” from 2004.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

“La Cadena,” a sculptural installation by Mely Barragán, from 2004.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

Sculptural installations by Daniel Ruanova, left, and Luis Guillermo Hernández — whose wall, tagged with the words “the other side” plays with the idea of division generated by the border wall.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

“Colección Elías-Fontes” is on view at CECUT through May 1. Paseo de los Heroes 9350, Zona Río, Tijuana, cecut.gob.mx.

And in the event you need food suggestions to accompany the art, here’s my Tijuana taco guide.

Find me on Twitter @cmonstah.