EMERSIÓN
An Intervention by Alejo

April 3 - April 23, 2025 

Opening Reception, April 3, 2025, 5–7 pm

My work is driven by process, as an ongoing, evolving act of reworking and layering that resists a definitive endpoint. Rooted in the traditions of Process Art and Abstract Expressionism, I embrace overload and intensity, favoring saturation that expresses energy and creates depth. Layers build, marks emerge and disappear, and surfaces shift over time. The act of reworking, concealing, and revealing creates a sense of history embedded within the piece, mirroring the way environments and experiences accumulate, transform, and erode.

Growing up in Venezuela, I was surrounded by the bold visual language of modernist abstraction. Jesus Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Alejandro Otero, and Gego shaped my understanding of color, movement, space, and perception Their investigations into structure and spatial dynamics continue to influence my approach. 

While living in Caracas I experienced firsthand the vibrancy and unpredictability of a city where energy, resilience, and improvisation shape daily life, deeply informing my approach to painting and installation. Resourcefulness and determination were essential values and that same adaptive mindset translates into my work. Now living in New York I am immersed in a constant dynamic intensity. I am influenced by the city’s abundance, diversity and its broad artistic network.

Much like these cities, my process aligns with the beauty of disorder, reflecting the dynamics of chaotic systems where apparent randomness gives way to underlying patterns, interconnections, and feedback loops. I am drawn to the layering of histories and to the interplay of chaos and structure—ideas that mirror both my personal experience and the dynamics of the environments I inhabit and create.

My work finds an internal rhythm within its complexity. Although explorations are driven sometimes by chance, repetition emerges within the layers as gestures echo and reappear. Marks collapse into new forms, and compositions find a sense of organization within their own disorder. This ongoing negotiation between unpredictability and structure allows the work to remain in a constant state of flux, embracing transformation rather than resolution.

Rather than originating from a fixed concept, my process unfolds intuitively, driven by the physicality of mark-making and the act of layering itself. There is an embrace of serendipities where each addition or subtraction alters the direction of the piece. Seemingly insignificant decisions can unexpectedly shift the trajectory of a painting, much like the butterfly effect in chaos theory. Each action, whether intentional or accidental, creates ripples that transform the piece in unpredictable ways. This openness to uncertainty allows the work to evolve through both intention and happenstance, reminiscent of the approaches of Pollock’s action painting.

Acknowledging my experience in fabrication and installation, as it continues to shape my artistic practice and my approach to materiality, I integrate remnants from job sites and found materials from urban environments into my work, as a way of embedding fragments of labor and place. The layering of these elements reflects a belief that meaning is not preordained but emerges through process, interaction, and time. Each piece holds traces of its own making, not as a fixed image but as a continuous process of becoming. 

Through leaning structures, suspended elements, and dimensional forms that push into space the viewer is invited to engage, prompting them to navigate, reconsider their surroundings, and become aware of their own presence and relationship within the space.

In my work meaning emerges in the act of doing.

Emersion is a reflection on the evolving nature of artistic creation.This exhibition traces my journey from being a student at Columbia to stepping into the world as an artist. It is a meditation on the influences I carry—some visible, others embedded in the process itself—shaped by mentors both within and beyond the university.

Tomas Vu’s use of vibrant color and dynamic composition, along with his experimental approach to printmaking, has expanded my relationship with materials and process. From Sarah Oppenheimer, I’ve gained a deeper sensitivity to spatial intervention— how structures shape perception, movement, and orientation. Arlene Shechet deepened my understanding of surrendering to materials, showing me how tactility, balance, and unpredictability can drive form, allowing objects and surfaces to emerge through an ongoing dialogue rather than strict control. Sarah Sze’s boundary-pushing practice has instilled in me an openness to exploration, the fluidity between mediums, and a heightened awareness of impermanence and time. The influence of Rirkrit Tiravanija, though less directly apparent, lingers in the idea of art as a living process rather than a fixed object. 

These perspectives, among many others, have subtly yet profoundly shifted my approach. This exhibition is not only a presentation of work but a testament to the ongoing evolution of practice—an emergence shaped by those who have guided, challenged, and expanded my way of making and thinking. 

-Alejandro Contreras

TAKE A VIRTUAL TOUR of the EXHIBITION HERE

For more information, please feel free to email us or call 212-854-7641.