Recombinant Art: solo exhibit

May 6-28, 2011 

Opening Reception May 6, 5-8 PM 

Gallery Hours Thursday-Saturday 11-3 PM

105 Art Gallery is Located at:

105 4th Street SW Albuquerque, NM 87102        

The 105 Art Gallery in Albuquerque NM, presents "Recombinant ART” the first solo exhibit of artwork by Taos, New Mexico artist Alex Chavez. Who is one of the Gallery's favorite artists, and you can see why. No sacred cow, or for that matter, sacred images go untouched or escape transformation by the ever-seeing eye of his “Mash-Up” creations. The unexpected and the grotesque, the sacred and the profane, the past and the future all find a home in many of his recombinant artworks. The art of the past masters, ads, cartoons, signs and symbols from around the world all get mashed up in Alex's macabre art grinder and seasoned with a bit of black humor. An extravaganza of image overload, with banners flying, surrealistic cows, Day of the dead cast, art is dead poster baby, masters' images reconfigured, and a host of more misshapen creations and artifacts. Don't miss it!

Images recombined and recontexualized to create new meanings, new combinations, new ideas, that is Recombinant Art, The New Art by Alex Chavez.  An internet troll, as well as former paint slinger, Alex combines his former love of painting by painting with found imagery and cooks up a new dish. The work draws on elements of art history, science, philosophy, and pop surrealism. A mash-up of ideas used to make critical comments of our modern times. All with a distinctive taste of New Mexican culture. A unique vision created in an even more unique hybrid process which is both fresh but accessible to collectors of southwest art. Yet this artist is definitely challenging and some may consider offensive to those very same aesthetics.

The artist was born and raised in East Los Angeles. After graduating with a bachelors degree in Fine Art Alex painted portrait's and murals for ten years. Moving to Taos, the town of his maternal roots with his wife to raise their two children in 1997. There he spent the next ten years quietly perfecting his unique style, craft, and vision. Alex hales from Taos, and is represented by galleries in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. And has shown recently in New York, Paris, Brussels, and Berlin, wherever pop surrealism is making an impact. 

Alex Chavez creates his works by cutting, pasting, altering and recombining old paintings into modern versions of old masterpieces. Creating fantastic images of new myths, icons, saints and sinners, gods and goddesses for our modern times. They are composed as a digital photo-montage on stretched canvas. Mixed media works that are hand embellished with acrylic paint, gold leaf, and traditional collage methods to create unique individual works of art.