About the Gallery
La Mancha Gallery
Founded in 2006 by curator Omar Holguin on Central Avenue in Los Angeles, La Mancha Gallery is an independent gallery and cultural platform dedicated to amplifying underrepresented voices and sustaining the living creative culture of Los Angeles. Operating under the Alternative Venue Exhibition Model, the gallery has produced exhibitions, public art initiatives, artist collaborations, and community programming rooted in the belief that art belongs everywhere people gather — not only in formal institutions, but in hotels, restaurants, community centers, and the spaces where culture and life converge.
La Mancha has been recognized by the Mexican Embassy, the Central Avenue Jazz Festival, and multiple Los Angeles-area cities for its sustained commitment to cultural equity, community storytelling, and the preservation of Los Angeles' diverse artistic legacy.
Exhibition Overview
Art for the Soul.
Conversation for the Ages.
“An afternoon of art, music, and conversation curated not simply for the senses — but for the soul.”
On October 8, 2011, La Mancha Fine Arts served as the curatorial anchor for Dialogs of the Heart — an intimate afternoon gathering conceived and organized by Omar Holguin's dear friend and collaborator Daniel Gutierrez, Mindful Leadership Expert and World Transformation Leader. Held at Hotel Maya in Long Beach, the event brought together two of the most compelling visionary voices of our time alongside an exhibition of international contemporary art selected expressly for the occasion.
The event centered on a rare afternoon with Don Miguel Ruiz — the internationally celebrated author of The Four Agreements, a work that resided on the New York Times bestseller list for more than seven years and stands among the most widely read books of its decade. Daniel Gutierrez, as both organizer and featured voice, brought his singular expertise in transformation and conscious leadership to an event that bore his imprint from conception to close — making Dialogs of the Heart not simply a gathering he hosted, but one he embodied.
Eighteen works were presented under consignment, spanning various formats and scales, with the collection held at La Mancha Gallery in Los Angeles. The afternoon was intimate by design — seating was limited, and the atmosphere deliberate: art, conversation, and transformation occupying the same space, at the same moment, in service of something larger than any single discipline alone.
Featured Voices
The Teachers
Author · Teacher · Toltec Nagual Tradition
Don Miguel Ruiz
Don Miguel Ruiz is the internationally celebrated author of The Four Agreements — a work that has resided on the New York Times bestseller list for more than seven years and ranks among the most widely read books of its era. His teaching represents a singular convergence of disciplines: trained as a neurosurgeon and deeply rooted in the Toltec Nagual (Shamanic) tradition, Ruiz has forged a body of work that bridges ancient wisdom and contemporary understanding of the human mind and spirit.
His books — among them The Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge, and The Fifth Agreement, a collaboration with his son Don Jose Ruiz — are read across the globe. He has been recognized as a National Heirloom of Mexico. His presence at Dialogs of the Heart was not simply that of a celebrated author — it was an invitation into a living practice of transformation.
Organizer · World Transformation Leader · Author · Speaker
Daniel Gutierrez
Dialogs of the Heart was conceived and organized by Daniel Gutierrez — a dear friend and long-time collaborator of Omar Holguin and La Mancha Gallery. His belief in the power of art as a vehicle for transformation made him the natural architect of an event where curatorial vision and conscious leadership could meet.
Daniel Gutierrez is a Los Angeles-based Mindful Leadership Expert, international business consultant, bestselling author, and sought-after motivational speaker whose work has inspired transformation across cultures, industries, and continents. Once a high-powered executive listed among the “Top 100 Hispanics in America” alongside Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, actor Edward James Olmos, and CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, Gutierrez turned a life of outward achievement toward the mastery of inner practice.
A former President of PRIMER and advisor to the Department of White House Personnel for the Obama Administration, Gutierrez has since led nearly 30 transformational quests to Machu Picchu, the Amazon, and the Himalayas — guiding entrepreneurs and corporate executives in deep-dive mindfulness immersions. He is a bestselling author of five books including Stepping Into Greatness and Radical Mindfulness, and was featured in the documentary Luminous World Views as one of eighteen world-renowned transformational thought leaders.
Learn more about Daniel and his work at danielgutierrez.com.
Curatorial Statement
On Curating
for the Soul
There are moments in a curatorial life when the work asks something different of you. Not simply to present art — but to create the conditions for something to happen. Dialogs of the Heart was one of those moments.
This event came to life because of my dear friend Daniel Gutierrez — a man whose faith in the intersection of art and transformation is as deep as his commitment to the people he serves. When Daniel brought this vision to me and invited La Mancha to serve as its curatorial anchor, I understood immediately what was being asked. The art could not simply decorate the room. It had to speak the same language as the teaching — to be in genuine dialogue with the philosophical and spiritual dimensions that Don Miguel Ruiz and Daniel bring to the world.
I selected artists whose practices engage themes of inner transformation, consciousness, and the deeper agreements we make with ourselves and the world around us. Artists working internationally, in multiple languages of form and meaning — painters, photographers, image-makers — each bringing a distinct but harmonious voice to a room that was already charged with possibility.
Hotel Maya, set along the Long Beach waterfront, provided a fitting stage — a space that opens outward, that breathes. Eighteen works were presented. The afternoon was limited in seating, broad in its reach. What happened there belonged to everyone in that room, and I remain deeply moved by the privilege of having shaped the visual world in which it unfolded.
Dialogs of the Heart was the inaugural edition of what I hoped would become a continuing series — a platform where art and wisdom meet, where the visual and the philosophical enter into genuine conversation. It remains one of the most meaningful curatorial engagements of my practice.
— Omar Holguin, Founder & Curator, La Mancha Gallery
Exhibiting Artists
International Contemporary Art
18 works presented under consignment · Various formats & scales · Collection held at La Mancha Gallery, Los Angeles
Painting · Sculpture · Mixed Media
Oscar Magallanes
Oscar Magallanes is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, and mixed media. Born and raised in a Mexican-American barrio east of downtown Los Angeles, his work is deeply informed by the cultural and social landscape of that upbringing — drawing on cultural iconography, the folkloric, and the visual language of propaganda to create work that is at once intimate and monumental.
Introduced to the professional art world through the Ryman Arts program at Otis College, Magallanes went on to complete his BA at UCLA and his MFA at the University of California, San Diego. Co-founder of the 3B Collective, his work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Latin American Art, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the McNay Museum, among others.
International · Mixed Media
D. Asheʻ
D. Asheʻ is an international contemporary artist whose work engages the intersections of identity, cultural memory, and inner transformation. Working across mediums and traditions, Asheʻ’s practice brings a spiritual depth and visual intelligence to themes of belonging, self-agreement, and the ongoing negotiation between the individual and the world — themes that found direct resonance with the philosophical dimensions of Dialogs of the Heart.
Painting · Muralism · Film
Eddie Jelinet
Eddie Jelinet is a Long Beach-based painter, muralist, and filmmaker whose artistic career began at the age of ten when he was commissioned to paint his first mural at a school in Netzahualcoyotl, Mexico. A scholarship to Casa de Cultura in Baja California followed, as did formal studies in painting and art history at the Cultural Institute of Mexicali. His work traverses the boundary between reality and fantasy — a threshold he describes as the domain of art itself.
His series Allegory of the Body and Soul — featuring luminous gold backgrounds and characters rendered in festive, deeply symbolic color — speaks directly to the sacred and the poetic dimensions at the heart of this exhibition. His work has been shown at venues including the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, Mantov’ART in Mantova, Italy, and numerous galleries across Los Angeles.
Photography
Gilad Kosinski
Gilad Kosinski is a Los Angeles-based photographer whose lens captures the world with a precision and sensitivity attuned to the deeper currents beneath the visible surface. His photographic practice — spanning portraiture, landscapes, and conceptual work — brings an international perspective to the act of seeing, turning the camera toward questions of presence, meaning, and the hidden agreements between subject and observer. His work was selected for Dialogs of the Heart for the contemplative quality it lends to any room it inhabits.
International · Painting · Mixed Media
Kevin T. Williams
Kevin T. Williams is an international artist working across painting and mixed media whose practice engages the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the human experience. His work — rich in symbolism and grounded in a deep engagement with narrative — asks viewers to slow down, to feel, and to recognize themselves in the images before them. The universality of his visual language made his work a natural presence in an exhibition designed to bridge art and personal transformation.
Painting · Mixed Media · Digital
David Taveras
David Taveras was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and trained in graphic design and advertising at the National University of Santo Domingo before earning a degree in Digital Media Arts from TCI College in New York. After years in New York’s art scene, he moved to California and quickly established himself within the Los Angeles contemporary art community.
His work — characterized by free-form images, figures without conventional proportions, and characters navigating urban, futuristic, and surreal environments — emerges from painting as a cathartic act: a path to liberation from the values and constructs imposed by family and society. Working in oil, acrylic, and chalk, Taveras has exhibited across the Dominican Republic, New York, and California, including a 2008 exhibition organized by Amnesty International in Los Angeles addressing violence against women.
Additional Works
Further International Artists
The exhibition also featured works by additional international artists whose practices further deepened the visual and philosophical landscape of the afternoon. All eighteen works presented were selected under the same curatorial criteria — work that speaks to inner transformation, consciousness, and the agreements we make with ourselves and those around us. The full collection was held at La Mancha Gallery, Los Angeles.
Venue & Details
Hotel Maya, Long Beach
Location
Hotel Maya
700 Queensway Drive
Long Beach, CA 90802
Date & Time
Saturday, October 8, 2011
1:00 PM – 5:00 PM PT
Seating Limited
Exhibition
18 works presented
Various formats & scales
Under consignment
Set along the Long Beach waterfront, Hotel Maya provided a fitting stage for an afternoon of this nature — a space that opens toward the water and the horizon, that breathes with the ease of a place comfortable with reflection. The combination of contemporary architecture, cultural warmth, and natural light made it an ideal setting for the convergence of art, wisdom, and conversation that Dialogs of the Heart was designed to create.
Est. 2006
La Mancha Gallery
Central Avenue · Los Angeles, California
Alternative Venue Exhibition Model
Curatorial Archive · October 2011
