Días de Admiración at Adjacent To Life

Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents Días de Admiración by Alex Reyes. Marisa Malone contributes the following essay:

“The thing I find both impressive and instructive about Reyes’ practice and person is his trust,” says curator Mark Roth. “He delves into his canvases with abandon, trusting the process and his impulses and curiosities to conjure forth something novel, something authentic, something fun, fascinating, and profound.”

On a recent studio visit, Roth and myself sat with artist Alex Reyes to discuss his latest work being shown at Adjacent to Life Gallery under the title Días de Admiración (Days of Admiration). Emerging after his Dark Series, these pieces express a subtle shift in tone. Surreal in style, full of distorted shapes and figures, and thick with paint that rises off the surface; nothing appears in stillness. There is constant movement and tension. The marks are active, unable to rest quietly on the canvas and we can see the influence of such figures as Goya and El Greco to Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, and child art.

Reyes’ work appears deeply subconscious to me. Creating comes first, analysis after. These paintings carry references to Reyes’ childhood memories and current life. He is unafraid to change course in the middle of the process, to follow the thread of a thought or feeling as it unfolds before him. “If I get something in a moment,” says Reyes, “and then lose it, I just keep going. The best part of being an artist is that it isn’t like the end of the world.”

Roth expands this idea, “left unsaid is the corollary that it isn’t the end, because it’s the beginning. Reyes’ trust extends to the inchoate. His paintings maintain the sense of becoming; all options are plausible. A “finished” work might at any time return to the easel to embark on a new journey. In this way the paintings are reminders and a demonstration that all lived experience is emergent and irreproducible.”

Reyes has started to incorporate more collage elements into his work, he flips though vintage magazines cutting out whatever catches his eye. “After the painting, I’ll just sit down and look at it and then look through my collage stuff and see what I can find to add to the story. I often think more texture, it needs more texture, so I’ll look around and see what I can use. I also like the flat effect from the collage, it’s not really something that I can get with paint, or at least not as quickly.” There is an overall sense of play and experimentation within this series and Reyes connects with that personally as he reflects on his process, “I feel like I’m only getting better.” Reyes often addresses difficult subject matter in his work. In the painting titled Stepping Stone we see a booted foot stepping on the head of a figure with a stone face as it pours out the contents of a bottle. The figure is bent, eyes cut out, wearing a mask. But also present is the sense of growth and budding awareness. Flowers spout in the foreground, there’s a red apple with a fresh bite taken out, calling to mind the fruit of knowledge or a sudden state of self-consciousness. “For Reyes this inhabitation of the present is greeted with conscious gratitude,” Roth notes. “Even in work that deals with weighty matters, such as anxiety, addiction and death, Reyes undergirds these situations with a sense of gratitude for the inexplicable experience of being alive. These are essential considerations that come from a tender place.”

And there’s humor. The piece titled Erotic Hat is darkly funny, portraying a hat made out of the top half of a bird and the lower half of a woman. This surreal, somewhat unsettling image is also cartoonish and goofy, the dainty woman’s legs dangle as the bedraggled bird holds in its beak a book titled The Britannica Sampler that’s collaged with vintage porn. “I love comedy so much,” Reyes says, “I think that’s what’s fun about being a human, laughing is important in my book and being able to joke freely.”

The way Reyes describes his paintings is like telling a story that can only partly be expressed in words. There exist little worlds within worlds, strange surprises that catch your eye and keep you looking longer, opening you to the possibilities of your own imagination. “Deep down it’s my inner child having fun,” Reyes says. As viewers we’re invited to do the same.

- Marisa Malone

Marisa Malone grew up in the Sierra foothills of Nevada. She studied writing and literature at The Evergreen State College and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has been published in BlazeVox Journal and Selfish Magazine, along with two self-published poetry chapbooks.

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Días de Admiración is on view through June 9, 2023 at the Adjacent To Life gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City).

Posted by tinsquo at May 13, 2023 01:24 AM