Local photographer Xavier Tavera has made a career of documenting lives lived on the margins, people playing and working just outside the mainstream. His gorgeous, color-saturated portraiture is at once starkly rendered and humane (the artist has called it simply "honest").  His provocative imagery both challenges and exploits stereotypical representations, with a special focus on Minnesota's Latin American community.

His new exhibition at the California Building -- created with his wife, painter Maria Cristina Tavera -- looks most intriguing. For "El Circo," the Taveras are exploring the Latino community's long-held affection for circus and street performance. The artists' new series of paintings and photographs offer a compelling, if ambivalent, examination of the human drives behind the big-top spectacles -- drives which at once fuel the entertainment but also serve to separate circus performers from the larger community.

Xavier Tavera's photographic portraits are lavishly staged affairs, with subjects set against the backdrop of elaborately crafted circus environments. Maria Cristina Tavera's paintings are lush and moody, evocative of the contradictions at the heart of life in the circus: the tight-knit conviviality but also the in-fighting and competition; the real physical toll of pulling off apparently effortless feats, routinely and cleanly.

The opening reception, a free event which is open to the public (but not necessarily suited for the kids), will be accompanied by entertainment from local Latino circus performer El Barrilito clown (Anselmo Cornejo) among others.

"El Circo" opens Saturday, May 30, with a reception from 7 to 11 p.m., and the exhibition will be on view at the California Building in Northeast Minneapolis through June 13.