Deep black skin navigates a pastel-colored world of impossibilities that might have been designed by M.C. Escher in the paintings of Alex Gardner. But despite the eerie absurdity of these figures, all of whom lack facial features, and the Dalí-esque flatness of his paintings, Gardner rejects the label of surrealism. “It’s definitely not surreal,” he said in an interview. “It’s representational, it’s figurative. I’m just trying to speak about life.”
The LA-based artist’s gently vibrant pastel palette evokes tones that seems quintessentially LA, imagery of purple sunsets against cloudless skies. "I never consciously developed a palette around LA,” Gardner tells The Creators Project. "However, since showing outside of LA and meeting more people from around the world, the general consensus seems to be that the colors do evoke some type of feeling of LA. I think the interpretation of life is the basis of art, so being born and raised here has, without question, directly affected what I make."
Work by Alex Gardner is included in the Jonathan LeVine Gallery’s Winter Invitational show, which runs until March 19th. Check out Gardner's work in the images and video below:
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