Light Work Lab will host a special artist talk and Q&A with Nando Alvarez-Perez, on Monday, Nov. 13, at 10 a.m., during which he will discuss his art, current residency at Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, and his thoughts on the state of the photographic medium.
Nando Alvarez-Perez, “Post-industrial Living Situation 1 (Self-Centered World),” 2017
Light Work Lab is located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center at 316 Waverly Ave. The talk and Q&A are free and open to students and community members.
California-based artist, and educator Alvarez-Perez explores ways photographic objects relate to death, memorials, the kitschy reproduction of art objects with architectural structures, photographs and textiles. A convergence of photography and sculpture, Alvarez-Perez’s artistic approach involves using modular framing systems in conjunction with wallpapers, fabric prints and carpets. His photographic installations respond architecturally and materially to space—pushing the traditional experience and scope of the medium.
Reflecting upon his body of work, Alvarez-Perez states, “I think of each photograph as a discrete but ambiguous unit of symbolic meaning, and when you start putting those units together larger structures emerge. Totems are familiar cultural objects which act as matrices of significance, complex structures of symbols that have the practical effect of forcing images into physical proximity to one another in a way that individually framed images cannot, but also, and maybe this is a bit naive in today’s hyper-commodified art climate, act as reminders of the less practical, more spiritual dimensions of art objects. The use of an ancient physical structure of symbols is an interesting avenue to explore to me in a time which seems to be accelerating towards some imagined and idealized future built on perpetual newness. The title and the works are about recognizing that there is no escaping history, the past and the future exist simultaneously and that what we call the ‘now’ is just a temporal term for where those two things meet and express themselves.”
Buffalo, New York, native Alvarez-Perez studied the history of cinema at Hunter College in Manhattan and received his B.A. in film studies and special honors from the Thomas Hunter Honors Program. In 2014, he graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he was awarded the Master of Fine Arts Fellowship in Photography. His work has been shown throughout the West Coast and was featured in Salón Boricua as part of the 4th Poly/Graphic Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2016, he had solo exhibitions at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, Tmoro Projects in Santa Clara, California, and was commissioned for a project at John McNeil Studio in Berkeley, California. Most recently, his work was exhibited at the inaugural edition of UNTITLED Art Fair in San Francisco as well as part of the exhibition, “Insights: New Approaches to Photography Since 2000,” at Photofairs SF.
