- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
- Snooze Button
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Alex GardnerSnooze Button I, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
152.4 x 152.4 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerSnooze Button II, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
152.4 x 121.92 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerSnooze Button III, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
152.4 x 121.92 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerSnooze Button IV, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
152.4 x 121.92 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerSnooze Button V, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
91.44 x 91.44 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerSnooze Button VI, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
91.44 x 91.44 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerSnooze Button VII, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
91.44 x 91.44 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerHanger, 2019
Gouache, colour pencil, oil pastel on paper
35.5 x 25.5 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerThe Scenic Route Home, 2019
Gouache, colour pencil, oil pastel on paper
35.5 x 25.5 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerStrip Sack, 2019
Gouache, colour pencil, oil pastel on paper
35.5 x 25.5 cmInformation -
Alex GardnerUntitled, 2019
Gouache, colour pencil, oil pastel on paper
35.5 x 25.5 cmInformation
Snooze Button
Alex Gardner
October 24 – December 7, 2019
MINE PROJECT is proud to present Snooze Button, the solo exhibition of young American painter Alex Gardner(b.1987, Los Angeles). Comprising several latest canvases and works on paper, the exhibition extends the artist’s formal experimentation with figure.
Working in acrylic, Gardner makes intense and memorable scenes. His entangled ink-black bodies are draped with dramatically folding white cotton separates and posed in pastel environments where the reflections of colour produce subtle gradients and thoughtful tonal shifts.
As in Mannerist paintings, they capture drama with their bodies through the distortion of torsion, a clump of muscle, a knobby knuckle, a languid wrist. Over-articulated fingers and feet contrast with completely featurelessly smooth faces; expression is only through body language. Gender is hinted at but as with the skin and the clothes and the environments, all cultural signifiers are smoothed over to de-individuate and universalize.
In these paintings the artist charges the familiar with poignancy, highlights the details as important, and paints figures that all genders and races could see themselves in. Mimicking snippets of classical painting — from an El Greco hand to a Pietà carry, a crucifixion foot, a Michelangelo muscle group — he is not just inserting his contemporary identity into art history, but also opening up these art historical perspectives for all viewers to connect with.
This body of work continues to use the figure as the main point of reference formally. Gardner states, “The visual language created thus far has, in many cases, been taken too literal and I am attempting to make a slight shift in these works to better convey the underlying themes of emotions, always in opposing binaries, that exist in perpetuity.”
The artist currently lives and works in Long Beach, California.