Exhibit Information

Artist: Alvaro A.S.F

Exhibition: A Response to Classical Music

Media: Paint, Canvas, Sculpture, Music, Mixed-Media

Gallery: Werby Gallery

Website: TBD – in the process

Instagram: TBD – in the process

About the Artist

CSULB’s School of Art has a very talented artist on their hands. Alvaro Alvarez is a transfer student and is most interested in inspiring kids to do what they feel and want and doing that by possibly becoming a teacher. He approaches this bit in a very different manner; however, I personally feel that it is what hooks viewers in and keeps their attention on his piece. He’s able to get these people who are looking at his piece questioning why he chose that particular song or those specific colors.

Formal Analysis

This piece had both parts to it – the blank canvas and the final product. The blank canvas that he started off with was completely white, everything was white ranging from the actual piece he painted on, to the clothes he wore and even the painting trays that he used. The final product was very colorful and the process of adding all of the colors was used with the bodily movements he created himself while listening to the beginning of an opera’s classical music. The painting wasn’t sharp or straight, but rather jagged and all over the place. There was no conformity or pattern that he followed in order to produce this masterpiece that he created. The texture that he created with his body and the paint was not flat or smooth, but rugged and irregular and this is what really draws people in – that this piece isn’t just a painting up on the wall – but that it is on the floor to where the viewers can really see how he was working and his thought process worked and see the detailed work he put into it.

Content Analysis

This piece took him 3+ days to complete. He had to set up his piece in this gallery and take into consideration every aspect of the room – the lighting, where the projector would be placed, how he would position the canvas’ – he said that the hardest part was combining every piece in the room to fit and mesh well with each other. He was asked many questions, one being what was the subject and the answer being a response to classical music and immediately after he was asked why classical music when there are so many other types of music out right now. He answered that we all listen to the same kind of music everyday because that is what’s popular right now, but no one ever thinks to play the music that was lost in the generations, like classical music. To him, classical music is very contemporary, it’s not widely heard but yet it still has very interesting patterns and notes that he was able to really make seen in his piece. He made sure to mention that this was not a “performance” or a “routine” that he planned, but that it was something that he just set his mind to and went in and did.

Synthesis/My Experience

I really enjoyed seeing this piece and being able to reflect on it from a “non-artist” viewpoint. I talked to him at the beginning and asked him if he was the one on the projector video and he said yeah and chuckled. I went on to explain how I was in awe of the work that he portrayed in that exhibit because being a Kinesiology major, these pieces aren’t really seen or brought up. I was really intrigued by the different movements he made and how they trasnferred on to the canvas that was just recently blank. He began to make me feel better by trying to relate his piece to my career path by asking what muscles he was using to do the different movements and I was then, even more fond of him. As the conversations went on and on, he ensure that he mention that he uses this piece as a “response to classical music” but not by “responding to thoughts or emotion” but by really just reacting to the noises and notes that are coming from this classical music piece he chose.