“Prelude to Understanding” Installation view at VSF, Seoul ©VSFVarious Small Fires (VSF) in Hannam-dong will present Prelude to Understanding, a solo exhibition by Alex Becerra (b.1989), from June 17 to July 15. This exhibition is the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia and his second with VSF.
The artist explores the way we view contemporary life through a variety of works, including painting, drawing, and sculpture. Becerra approaches painting with the goal of evoking an embodied response from the viewer and uses high-quality oil paints to create noisy, rough painting with dense surfaces through color, gesture, and imagery. His works often feature montage elements, superimposing cacophony, chaos, and distractions of modern life across multiple moments in time.
The work in this exhibition, “The Worst of Classical Easel Painting Oil,” exemplifies the artist’s tension between fragmented simultaneity and clarity. In this work, a bearded, well-dressed figure stands at an easel, working on a small canvas. The outline of the gentleman in yellow paint is reminiscent of ‘European plein air painting’. The blades of grass behind him, around him, and within his outline extend to the right-side canvas, where a woman’s figure is painted in a tropical landscape.
The woman’s body is both nude and represented by tropical plants, an acknowledgment of the journeys that artists like Gauguin and Rousseau took to Europe in search of ‘pure’ inspiration for their landscapes and portraits. The clearly articulated figure of the painter and the abstractions surrounding it suggest the artist’s power to create his reality, leaving the viewer’s gaze as an exclusive domain.
