{"id":55021,"date":"2020-10-21T08:52:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T14:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=55021"},"modified":"2020-10-26T11:44:33","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T17:44:33","slug":"andrew-alba-paints-from-the-gut-in-american-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/andrew-alba-paints-from-the-gut-in-american-soup\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Alba Paints from the Gut in “American Soup”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you\u2019re being followed or navigating a dangerous place, your natural defense mechanisms activate and start tuning. These mechanisms are buried in our mind and body, just as they are in any other domesticated animal. Colors get brighter, movements slow down, and you can shift from terror to fighting mode in a fraction of a second. This is the realm of instinct, where your gut determines if you\u2019re going to run or throw punches \u2014 and where painter Andrew Alba reports from, depicting the intense side of Utah in works like \u201cStray Pregnant Dog in Glendale,\u201d \u201cRunning,\u201d or \u201cRose Park Pozole.\u201d In his latest show,\u00a0American Soup <\/i>at Modern West Fine Art, Alba weaves bright red paint, aggressive lines and the symbolism of half-feral animals to depict a world of migrants, laborers, worried women, fighters and other members of marginalized communities. With sculpture, video installation, and two-dimensional works, layers of artistic instinct are on display at the Salt Lake City gallery through Oct. 30.<\/h4>\n

\u201cNegro Matapacos\u201d is an oil on panel work featuring a black dog made from black spiky lines and stripped-down shapes. The subject of the painting is a contemporary protest legend. \u201cIn some countries, like Chile and Greece, stray dogs rule the streets,” explains the online publication\u00a0Blurred Bylines<\/a>.\u00a0 “So when people take to those streets and protest their governments, how do the dogs react? Some of them join in and protect protesters against the brutal police forces who confront them.\u201d During Chile\u2019s university student protests in the summer of 2011, a stray named \u201cEl Negro Matapacos\u201d (“the Black Cop-killer”) ran with thousands of young protesters, showing his teeth and barking at the lines of police officers who attacked them with water cannons and tear gas. Images of this black dog spread to North America and one now graces the inside of a Salt Lake City fine art gallery \u2014 an ironic jab you might expect from an artist who painted a large blocky sneaker and titled it \u201cCortez.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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“Negro Matapacos,” 2020, oil on panel, 36 x 36 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Abstraction and simplification of form are ways to get out of the rational so that emotion gets center stage. The techniques Alba uses, including his mark-making and color pairing in \u201cNegro Matapacos,\u201d \u201cSelf Portrait,\u201d \u201c801 Protests,\u201d \u201cSkull\u201d and \u201cAmerican Drone,\u201d <\/i>echo artists like Henri Matisse and Georges Braque, who were labeled les Fauves<\/i> or \u201cthe wild beasts.\u201d \u201cMy process is quick and intuitive,\u201d Alba says. \u201cThrough art I am able to communicate directly, sidestepping any possible restrictions from language. I paint my experience, what I see.\u201d His color choice, much like the Fauves, digs into the subconscious. \u201cOjos y Guantes\u201d features a large pair of bright red boxing gloves, attracting visitors to the gallery like the flags bullfighters wave.<\/h4>\n
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“Ojos y Guantes,” 2018,
oil on panel, 58 x 58 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Alba\u2019s own \u201cBull,\u201d a mixed media sculpture, brings pieces of reclaimed construction materials together in a carefully balanced skeleton, covered by a piece of cloth layered with oil paint to depict the head of a bull facing the viewer. \u201cMany of the works on canvas are created on repurposed drop cloths from construction job sites that I have worked on,” Alba explains. “The sculptures are made with reclaimed lumber and drywall plaster that have been left behind \u2026 From this practice, I am able to reference the continual and unacknowledged back-breaking labor experienced by millions.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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“Migrant Worker,” 2017,
graphite on reclaimed fabric, 54 x 66 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cMigrant Worker\u201d is also made with reclaimed fabric from a construction site, the blank face under a sombrero all outlined with charcoal. The mark-making in this work has the deft, intentional quality that takes the steadiest of hands to pull off, especially as Alba approaches the charged topic of migration, which has sparked the most violent rhetoric and political behavior the country has seen in decades, but that is not at all new. Alba says, \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to overlook the slavery, genocide and oppression embedded in the nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Modern West’s curation of American Soup,<\/i>\u00a0and the large crowd at the opening despite the COVID environment, shows the Salt Lake City art scene is dialing into communities that have been traditionally pushed to the margins of society and\u00a0 <\/span>have had their voices muted. By amplifying artists who are exploring their roots through visual art, an important zone of multicultural communication is opening up. Alba portrays multicultural power and caste dynamics he\u2019s caught in the middle of with nuance, straight from the horse\u2019s mouth. As a descendant of Mexican migrant workers and a construction worker himself, Alba tells stories still foreign to the mainstream Salt Lake City art community and pushes his audience, both young and old, to understand their world from multiple angles and listen to their guts.<\/h4>\n

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Andrew Alba: American Soup<\/em>, Modern West Fine Art<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through October 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re being followed or navigating a dangerous place, your natural defense mechanisms activate and start tuning. These mechanisms are buried in our mind and body, just as they are in any other domesticated animal. Colors get brighter, movements slow down, and you can shift from terror to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1523,"featured_media":55027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[3362,1905],"class_list":["post-55021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-andrew-alba","tag-modern-west-fine-art"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/AndrewAlba_RosePark_Pozole_oiloncanvas_64x64_aalb18_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 19:39:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1523"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55021"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55028,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55021\/revisions\/55028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}