Richard Alvarez Reviews

RICHARD ALVAREZ

Images CV Statement Press

PAINTER RICHARD ALVAREZ EXHIBITS NEW WORKS AT HALCYON

Glittering pigments catch the light, a pearly white on white. Painted only on glass they take on the quality of precious metal. The images are barely discernable until I move closer. I walk a few feet to the left and the image shimmers into focus. As I move a foot closer to the right, depth gently pushes out from the painting into view. A woman’s head is thrown back in ecstasy, her breasts pushing and smothering her face as she arches her back, the outline of her genitals vibrate when I turn my head right to left. If I move away and bend down a little her open legs come into view. “Not the usual religious stuff,” I think to myself. I look around and there is an image of Christ, but maybe it isn’t. His legs are spread open and beckons like the Sacred Heart of Christ.

Although Alvarez’s new work seems to be a carnal study of sorts, rarely does it depart from his usual fixation with themes of religion, guilt and repression. He taunts us with connections of religion vs. repression, of pleasure vs. pain. His fastidious preoccupation with rituals explored through painted childhood images of Santeria in earlier work is now again revisited through his new images of pleasure. Because the ‘religious’ are concerned with ‘vows’ and religion with faith and worship, are not our acts of sexual pleasure also devoted to worship and faith? In particular, obsessive faith with what feels good, or in this case, what looks like something that might feel pleasurable. The religious icons and the images of previously repressed sexuality are closely connected. Richard Alvarez gives us a glimpse of religion. If only sub-consciously, he asks us to look at what gives us pleasure, and then challenges us to lift whatever that may be to martyrdom.

Benjamin Soto, 2001

Creed as Construct

Richard Alvarez creates paintings in a vernacular that is arcane, yet at the same time excitingly new. He approached his work with a keen eye in the classical past, His reverential and sometimes mournful images are in part suggestive of Duccio, as they are stylized and Siennese in mood. At the same time, his technique of transferring images on glass, painting with acrylics, glitter, epoxy, and other synthetic polymers evoke a mass popular urban culture. Mr. Alvarez recently exhibited a series of paintings based on figures of colonial Christendom. He also chose to paint the devotional poster child of several belief systems. Ganesh, Jesus, Yemaja, Elegua, and Obatala are some of the illuminated deities. They were framed in antique frames, which were newly painted or gilded in gold, and yet appeared much older due to a purposeful attrition. The work matched the framing in context. Some of the figures had their manes written across their chest in a pronouncement, much like a graffiti artist would apply his or her own signature “tag”. These modern martyrs seem to be advertising themselves, as so much religious art was historically used for solicitation, The inclusion of a decorated Ku Klux Klansman and his own version of the “Absolut” ad campaign in this series shows that Mr. Alvarez realized the subtleties of promotion and modern testimony. His figures make this statement: “Come forth, look upon my beauty - believe what I believe.”

Erika Belle, New York

On Richard Alvarez

There is nothing cold or clean about Richard Alvarez' works on glass - they evoke instead the dusty panes of bodegas where coffee cans nestle beneath plaster statues of Santa Barbara, trimmed in sequins for her feast day. For this artist, the mottled windows of his boyhood with their mirror shards and torn mylar have become the backdrop of his most memorable paintings, where Yoruba godesses share the stage with Puerto Rican Nationalist heroines, overlayed with trick writing, glitter, oyster-shells and mica fairy dust. In places the image breaks down into the barest shimmer of a saintly face - as if a still-damp shroud of Turin was pressed onto white glitter, then clear glass.

The frequent appearances of Santeria deities and their Catholic counterparts in Alvarez' work are quite natural, given his childhood. Raised in the Bronx by his French Canadian mother, a practicing santera (priestess,) he grew up with the rites of New York's unoffical "second religion," including bird sacrifices tossed out of his apartment's windows. "By fourteen, there was lots of pressure on me to make santo (priest) within three years. I began to rebel, changed my look to a very hard-edged punk aesthetic, and headed downtown to the Mudd Club."

Here in the electric Downtown clubworld of the early eighties, this openly gay, half-Dominican teenager raised by his white mother and adoptive black father found affirmation. Alvarez was befriended by artists like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, who encouraged him to create, insisting that "It doesn't matter if you're from the Bronx." At Danceteria, his signature smile at full wattage, he met his mentor, fashion eminence and costume designer Patricia Field. For twelve years, he assisted her on a wide range of styling projects, including the television shows Wiseguy and Crime Story. Within the kaleidoscopic beehive of the

House of Field, costume was art - "we painted sets with costumes and hair."

Alvarez began to paint with other things in 1999 during a bluesy period when he devoured volumes of Jung and Genet along with the obligatory Twelve Step tracts. Stunned by the images of forgotten faith that poured out onto his early paintings, he opened a studio in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, where the wraparound light infused the panels and their iconic Caribbean subjects (the peasant archetype "El Jibarito," the Santeria orisha, the omnipresent American Express logo.) The works were first shown in his friend Cabiria's "classically tacky" gallery on the Lower East Side in 2000 and have since been included in group shows at halcyon, Jill Platner and Other Worlds.

"I've been compared with other artists who use religious imagery in their work, sometimes in a way that is offensive to believers. Given my past, my complete negation of all faith in childhood and my return to it years later, my paintings can not have that same meaning -they are actually about belief and glorification." Behind him, on the wall, Santa Clara's face shimmers for an instant, then disappears from view as Brooklyn's sky turns to evening.

Chi Chi Valente, New York

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RICHARD ALVAREZ Images CV Statement Press PAINTER RICHARD ALVAREZ EXHIBITS NEW WORKS AT HALCYON Glittering pigments catch the light, a pearly white on white. Painted only on glass they take on the quality of precious metal. The images are barely discernable until I move closer. I walk a few feet to the left and the image shimmers into focus. As I move a foot closer to the right, depth gently pushes out from the painting into view. A woman’s head is thrown back in ecstasy, her breasts pushing and smothering her face as she arches her back, the outline of her genitals vibrate when I turn my head right to left. If I move away and bend down a little her open legs come into view. “Not the usual religious stuff,” I think to myself. I look around and there is an image of Christ, but maybe it isn’t. His legs are spread open and beckons like the Sacred Heart of Christ. Although Alvarez’s new work seems to be a carnal study of sorts, rarely does it depart from his usual fixation with themes of religion, guilt and repression. He taunts us with connections of religion vs. repression, of pleasure vs. pain. His fastidious preoccupation with rituals explored through painted childhood images of Santeria in earlier work is now again revisited through his new images of pleasure. Because the ‘religious’ are concerned with ‘vows’ and religion with faith and worship, are not our acts of sexual pleasure also devoted to worship and faith? In particular, obsessive faith with what feels good, or in this case, what looks like something that might feel pleasurable. The religious icons and the images of previously repressed sexuality are closely connected. Richard Alvarez gives us a glimpse of religion. If only sub-consciously, he asks us to look at what gives us pleasure, and then challenges us to lift whatever that may be to martyrdom. Benjamin Soto, 2001 Creed as Construct Richard Alvarez creates paintings in a vernacular that is arcane, yet at the same time excitingly new. He approached his work with a keen eye in the classical past, His reverential and sometimes mournful images are in part suggestive of Duccio, as they are stylized and Siennese in mood. At the same time, his technique of transferring images on glass, painting with acrylics, glitter, epoxy, and other synthetic polymers evoke a mass popular urban culture. Mr. Alvarez recently exhibited a series of paintings based on figures of colonial Christendom. He also chose to paint the devotional poster child of several belief systems. Ganesh, Jesus, Yemaja, Elegua, and Obatala are some of the illuminated deities. They were framed in antique frames, which were newly painted or gilded in gold, and yet appeared much older due to a purposeful attrition. The work matched the framing in context. Some of the figures had their manes written across their chest in a pronouncement, much like a graffiti artist would apply his or her own signature “tag”. These modern martyrs seem to be advertising themselves, as so much religious art was historically used for solicitation, The inclusion of a decorated Ku Klux Klansman and his own version of the “Absolut” ad campaign in this series shows that Mr. Alvarez realized the subtleties of promotion and modern testimony. His figures make this statement: “Come forth, look upon my beauty - believe what I believe.” Erika Belle, New York On Richard Alvarez There is nothing cold or clean about Richard Alvarez' works on glass - they evoke instead the dusty panes of bodegas where coffee cans nestle beneath plaster statues of Santa Barbara, trimmed in sequins for her feast day. For this artist, the mottled windows of his boyhood with their mirror shards and torn mylar have become the backdrop of his most memorable paintings, where Yoruba godesses share the stage with Puerto Rican Nationalist heroines, overlayed with trick writing, glitter, oyster-shells and mica fairy dust. In places the image breaks down into the barest shimmer of a saintly face - as if a still-damp shroud of Turin was pressed onto white glitter, then clear glass. The frequent appearances of Santeria deities and their Catholic counterparts in Alvarez' work are quite natural, given his childhood. Raised in the Bronx by his French Canadian mother, a practicing santera (priestess,) he grew up with the rites of New York's unoffical "second religion," including bird sacrifices tossed out of his apartment's windows. "By fourteen, there was lots of pressure on me to make santo (priest) within three years. I began to rebel, changed my look to a very hard-edged punk aesthetic, and headed downtown to the Mudd Club." Here in the electric Downtown clubworld of the early eighties, this openly gay, half-Dominican teenager raised by his white mother and adoptive black father found affirmation. Alvarez was befriended by artists like Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, who encouraged him to create, insisting that "It doesn't matter if you're from the Bronx." At Danceteria, his signature smile at full wattage, he met his mentor, fashion eminence and costume designer Patricia Field. For twelve years, he assisted her on a wide range of styling projects, including the television shows Wiseguy and Crime Story. Within the kaleidoscopic beehive of the House of Field, costume was art - "we painted sets with costumes and hair." Alvarez began to paint with other things in 1999 during a bluesy period when he devoured volumes of Jung and Genet along with the obligatory Twelve Step tracts. Stunned by the images of forgotten faith that poured out onto his early paintings, he opened a studio in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, where the wraparound light infused the panels and their iconic Caribbean subjects (the peasant archetype "El Jibarito," the Santeria orisha, the omnipresent American Express logo.) The works were first shown in his friend Cabiria's "classically tacky" gallery on the Lower East Side in 2000 and have since been included in group shows at halcyon, Jill Platner and Other Worlds. "I've been compared with other artists who use religious imagery in their work, sometimes in a way that is offensive to believers. Given my past, my complete negation of all faith in childhood and my return to it years later, my paintings can not have that same meaning -they are actually about belief and glorification." Behind him, on the wall, Santa Clara's face shimmers for an instant, then disappears from view as Brooklyn's sky turns to evening. Chi Chi Valente, New York