A review of Candida Alvarez at Monique Meloche
Celebrities are multi-hyphenate when they’re celebrated for more than one thing — like Rihanna for example: singer, songwriter, actor, businesswoman, fashion icon. Wow !-- amazing - isn’t she? Candida’s list of accomplishments is more modest. ( painter, professor, mother , daughter ) - but isn’t modesty one of her greatest strengths? She does not appear to be aiming for artworld celebrity. Perhaps that’s why it took many decades before galleries wanted to show her. Despite being a Latina person of color, her work does not proclaim identity. Despite work that galleries claim is "conceptually rich", concept is neither sufficient nor necessary to notice and be captivated by her work. She makes things that are exceptionally beautiful - and that’s enough.
Alvarez loves color - she loves shapes - and she weaves them together into multiple streams of sensual awareness that erupt, flow, and interact with each other - as opposed to a painter like Helen Frankenthaller, for example, where one single, powerful flood is surging into each painting. And as opposed to many painters whose shapes are provocative, angry, or threatening. Candida’s happy shapes elicit joy and wonder - like those of Bob Thompson.
Candida Alvarez, Partly Cloudy, 84 x 72, acrylic , paint pen, glitter on linen, 2023
Doesn’t the above feel like idyllic life on a tropical island?
It’s one of four large pieces with a title that’s meteorological and an affect that feels like a day at the beach - as experienced from a variety of viewpoints including aerial.
Raphael, Madonna with the Chair, 1513-14
In her
New City interview the artist reveals that the above
was one of her sources for this series, along with iPhone photos of her mom. It's good to be inspired by high art as well as family affection. To me, however, these pieces bring to mind the soft shapes, contiguous edges, and various colors of laundry spinning around in a dryer, with a small red or yellow sock, for example, poking out among the blue or black trouser legs.
Candida Alvarez, from the Palimpsest series, 2021
Here’s a piece from her previous series. The tropical island is still there, but here it’s seen through the windows of a very lively interior. Is it really a palimpsest ? - a technique currently fashionable in academia because it involves written text - one that has been partially covered over. Not really. A preliminary sketch was printed onto her canvas - but text was never involved. And even if it were - the artist is quoted as saying: "Success in my paintings is when I forget where I started." An anti-conceptual manifesto if ever there was one.
Gallery shot of Palimpsest at Gavlok Gallery, 2021
I wish I had seen this exciting show.
The smaller pieces on display are somewhat disappointing - perhaps because of reflections off the protective glass. The works actually look much better online. But still, there is a collapsing smallness - a claustrophobia I never feel in the larger work. They make me feel trapped, though others may feel right at home.
Candida Alvarez, Skowegan #7, 12 x 9, 2023 flashe paint and pencil on yupo paper.
The reference to Raphael might remind us of the Raphael rooms at the Vatican - a place where over-achieving artists were once recruited ( or compelled) to furnish with the best of their work - for an exhibition that has lasted 500 years - and still counting.
This exhibition at Monique Meloche comes down in January and the four large, meteorological pieces will scatter to the four winds.
I realize that of the many problems faced by our civilization, this is pretty far down the list. But is it too much to ask that some mega-buck donor to our art museums might also fund buildings, like the Rothko Chapel, for secular artists with a compelling, universal, upbeat achievement in wall size painting ? Candida would certainly be one, among several, local candidates for such a project.
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