In a world replete with ecological catastrophe and political turmoil, the customarily inward Andrew Alba channels calamities into catharsis for his exhibition of new works at Material.
Andrew Alba: Inheritance
March 1–April 19, 2024
Material, Salt Lake City
On a pleasant day at the reservoir with his young daughter, artist Andrew Alba recalls with clarity his reaction to the startlingly low water levels. This indicator of a drastically changing ecological landscape flooded him with emotion—about the climate, resurgent cycles of genocide, political strife, all of these ills which impact the world his children will inherit.
In his fourth exhibition within the last year, Alba confronts both distinct subjects and a novel stylistic approach (with his use of graphite) that deviates materially from the painterly works for which he’s become known. Alba’s inspiration appears in his new exhibition Inheritance, on view at Material until April 19. This collection is somehow even more raw than what we may be accustomed to seeing from an artist who wears his heart on his sleeve.
Here, one detects a catharsis in his dizzying scribbles and figures, whose pronounced faces bear unmistakable emotion. Alba is undoubtedly a forerunner in the category of Utah’s most gifted painters—not despite but likely because he is a self-taught artist. Indeed, his work merges a certain whimsical innocence with flagrantly affecting and difficult themes.
The exhibition continues a strong inaugural year for Material, the contemporary art gallery that also houses the studio spaces of its founders—artists Jorge Rojas and Colour Maisch. Located in South Salt Lake City, the intimate space is comprised of two adjoining rooms. In this show of Alba’s new works (all from 2024), a wall in the first exhibition room displays rows of graphite drawings and oil paintings. Fight in Blue is decidedly more polished as an illustration-style drawing than the expressionistic renderings he conducts in India ink.
In the adjoining space, one encounters larger paintings. In two instances Alba has arranged individual works of equal size directly next to one another as diptychs. In one pairing, the earthy and stark hues of a painting of horses contrasts strikingly with a painting of dead geese, their ethereal white necks dangling from the frame within a sea of cool blues. This smaller work is in direct dialogue with a larger graphite depiction of swans on an opposite wall.
A particularly fascinating result of Alba’s newfound experiments with graphite is the use of overlapping and intersecting lines, the forms of which blend in an almost hallucinatory way. Alba describes this as a manifestation of the cyclical nature of generational trauma, which is also mirrored on a national scale. Just as Sigmund Freud’s repetition compulsion indicates that we repeat to master the source of our trauma, Alba’s marks work as both an amplification and distortion of this primordial desire to understand so we may overcome.
