Estoy Bien, from Air Paintings (2017-2019), 2017
latex ink, acrylic, and enamel on PVC mesh with aluminum
The Brooklyn-born, Chicago-based artist, Candida Alvarez, is a name you may know from Comme des Garçons fall 2017 "Shirt" and "Hommes" collections. You also may know her from the four large paintings commissioned by the City of Chicago displayed on the riverwalk.
With a professorship in painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Alvarez still manages to travel, collecting pockets of inspiration for her series. The most recent, "Estoy Bien," which translates to "I'm Fine," is a more personal story for Alvarez, highlighting her family's personal journey with Hurricane Maria.
Upon the closing of her first exhibition at Monique Meloche Gallery, **_Flaunt_** spoke with the acclaimed abstract artist on "Estoy Bien," transformation, and travel influences.
**Your nostalgia for Puerto Rico and its devastation of Hurricane Maria inspired many recent works, prompting the title Estoy Bien (I'm Fine). What memories and narratives appear for you in this series?**
The devastation of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the subsequent earthquakes have created an unremitting sense of distress and now these concerns include the Corona Virus. My mother had to leave her home in PR in 2017 because she could not live there alone since my father passed a few months before. We were still mourning his death when the hurricane struck the island.
This exhibition began with an exploration of that narrative as seen in the first and largest painting from 2017 which has words integrated within the painting ground. I inserted the words Estoy Bien which translate into “I'm fine.”
During Hurricane Maria those words were spoken over and over again by survivors into the mics of the news reporters, helping to connect them to friends and families desperate to hear from them. Not only were they words meant to calm loved ones.. but they were words of amazing resilience.
Installation View
Estoy Bien, 2020
**Your recent works represent a period of transformation for you. How does this series differ from your previous work?
**These new paintings which I refer to as “air paintings” are layered on top of digitally printed PVC mesh material. It took me a year to figure out how to display them. I decided on a stand that was lightweight, portable with a slim profile. That is how I got to the aluminum. I did not want to use the wall, I wanted the paintings to have their own legs, and be double-sided. The actual painting surface allow air, light and paint to pass through. They become a membrane of paint, sitting on top of a digital print composed of earlier paintings. These paintings are more gestural, simultaneously responding to not only the mesh texture, but reactivating an interplay within the spaces, shapes and colors reproduced from earlier paintings that are embedded within.
**How has Chicago and world travel influenced your work over the years?**
I came to Chicago to teach at the Art Institute of Chicago. I am now on a year long sabbatical and it has been a life changing event. I just got back from Umbria and saw work that inspired a new body of work that was currently shown at the Independent Fair entitled Vision Paintings. I would say the iPhone camera has become an indispensable tool for me to track my travels both local and international. I often capture details through the lens like a drawing that finds its way through my work. Everything is available to use. For me color and shape shift through time as they alternate between research and material.
Estoy Bien, from Air Paintings (2017-2019), 2017
latex ink, acrylic, and enamel on PVC mesh with aluminum
**What can readers expect from your monograph, "Candida Alvarez: Here. A Visual Reader”?
**The book is the companion piece to my 2017 exhibition curated by Terry R Myers at the Chicago Cultural Center. I hope it offers you the chance to understand the depth of my practice, the scope of my engagement with other artists and colleagues and the expanded community that has surrounded me for the last 40 years.
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Images courtesy of Monique Meloche Gallery
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