JAIRO ALFONSO

Throughout my career, I have been interested in exploring material culture from an archaeological perspective, particularly the multilayered nature of objects, their history and symbolism, in paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, performances, and mixed media works on paper.

More recently, I have started developing a new body of work, reflecting on the relationship we, as human beings, establish with the objects we create, use, and discard. I have been exploring the act of hoarding in connection with the genre of the still life. I address hoarding as “horror vacui” drawings. These works depicts accumulations of objects, devices and accessories from everyday life, piled up, and drawn closely together, so as to flood the pictorial space. Each object is represented life-size. Hoarding as clear sign of consumerism inform this series. I pair the act of drawing with that of consuming goods, which is why I pack these metaphorical boxes with objects of every kind. The title of the works indicates the number of objects drawn in it.

As for the dissasembling series, I focus on a single object which function is that of offering audio or visual information (radios, cameras, tvs, etc…), and the act of dismantle it becomes an anatomic lesson of sorts, which allows the viewer to metaphorical immerse themselves into a new world composed by the history, epoch, ideology, materials and shapes hidden in this artifacts. Therefore from these works I usually extract the objects that become subjects of my videos, characterized by the use of the stop-motion animation.

In 2021 I started developing the series titled Endoscopic Landscapes that are a continuation of the disassembly series. For it, I use an endoscopic camera to capture images of the internal structure of the types of devices mentioned above. I later translate some of those to canvases recreating landscapes of sorts. These obsolete mechanisms brought to a new dimension offer a dystopian vision of useless industrial spaces or abandoned cities that I like to called micro-ruins.

I have started this series by dissecting radios and TVs enssembled in Cuba in the 70s which brands are titled with names given to groups of natives from the Caribbean: Taíno (radio), Caribe (TV), Siboney (Radio). So, I feel like this is a process involving ethnography, archive, history…By reviewing the fossilized episodes and technology of that period this series aims at analyzing the Cold War Era, its objects and notions, also the events and the sensitivity transmitted by the media back then. I feel that this project is part of an obsession of Cubans of my generation to search for the missing information, perhaps in the search for the truth: a utopian enterprise in the post -truth era.

¨494 ( Bergenline Avenue )¨ Watercolor pencil / paper 89.9x89.3 inches . (228x227cm) .This is the result of my residence at Gu@enberg Arts which gave me the opportunity to research the visuality of this mulFcultural avenue of New Jersey.

I took pictures and measures of hundreds of objects in the streets and establishments of Bergenline Avenue to built this archive of 494 life-size elements…