self/en/code
A series which explores the action of encoding in painting and drawing. In the works, Alejandro references his life in South Florida by incorporating memories, desires, ideals, longing for home, and wonder for the environment.
Rather than conveying these topics straightforwardly, the artist creates a visual language and then encrypts, remixes and edits his experience. Some works, such as “Wants and Needs,” use an easily read code to depict universal concepts of loving, safety, and home.
On the other hand, works like “Seat of Power, Shining Maiden, SPERM” beckon the viewer to decipher its meaning. This ultimately results in a questioning of whether these images are meant to be understood or just experienced, an idea explored in “Wandering Inside”.
For this series, Alejandro primarily works in acrylic because the medium can be layered, edited and incorporated with other sentimental materials, such as fabric, stone granules and paper pulp. He cites artists Katherine Bradford and Amy Sillman, who are known to employ successive layers of acrylic, as major inspirations to work in this creative process. The artist shows his love for drawing by using gestural marks throughout the works and by incorporating the medium of paper (in the form of papier-mâché) in the abstract paintings. In addition, Alejandro strives for the pieces to present a sense of awareness of themselves as paintings. David Joselit's essay "Painting Beside Itself" from 2009 posits that painting’s self-awareness allows it to remain relevant and critically engaged in a rapidly changing cultural landscape. In Alejandro’s work, this self-awareness can manifest itself as literal, “Pupil of the Eye, METEORITE,” for example, presents the viewer with a green eye.
This self-awareness can also be presented in a cheeky way. For example, “Birthday", plays on the tension between a bouncy frosted surface, reminiscent of funfetti icing, and a weathered underlayer of broken vessel fragments. Throughout all the works in this exhibit, contrasts in materiality (such as papier-mâché coming up against a sea of stone granules) and portions of the paintings that highlight the obvious use of acrylic paint (areas of flat color) or human intervention (scratching) make it apparent to the viewer that they are looking at paintings and drawings.
Finally; Why encode? The simple answer is that the artist encodes to limit the vulnerability of exploring personal topics close to him. We are increasingly living in a world where self-censorship and code-switching have become the norm. How one presents their story changes in the face of social media and politics. However, Alejandro believes that there is something about the product of encoding that can be beautiful and offer space for dialogue and imagination. Rather than thinking of his work functioning as narrative prose, Alejandro explores the possibility of visual art acting as poetry.