Alex Nuñez

ARTIST STATEMENT

Resembling a large, unruly overgrowth, Alex Nuñez’s monumental abstract paintings suggest that ignorance is the ultimate existential threat. Creating large-scale canvases that obscure hidden messages with boldly colored splashes and creeping abstract figures, her paintings are hidden object games reflecting the anxiety of human impermanence. The immersive, monumental scale of her paintings swallows us whole, an ominous reminder that survival is tenuous in a culture that emphasizes materiality and instant gratification over the protection of our natural environment.

Nuñez’s work is entirely spontaneous, emphasizing intuitive meticulous mark-making and gestural splashes in bold, vibrant color. These abstract markings are layered over a series of hidden references drawn from pop culture that resonate with the artist. Internet memes, song lyrics, tabloid fodder, and celebrity scandal are subliminal messages invading our psyche, and Nuñez’s canvases alludes that these missives are actually hiding in plain sight. Through a set of personal hieroglyphics - fingers, teeth, man-eating insects, foliage and polyps recur frequently in her work - Nuñez reflects on her native Miami backdrop and her own anxiety toward its material nebulous. She typically moves across the canvas as she works, dually emulating both uncontrollable jungle spread and the all-consuming nature of 24/7 connectivity. Not a single portion of the canvas is spared, and Nuñez works rigorously until her canvas is covered in paint. Analogous of the menace of invasive environmental spread, and drawing attention to the profound shift toward material culture in our digital and analog worlds, Nuñez’s paintings are a startling dreamscape of an altered and complex reality.

BIO

Alex Nuñez is a Cuban-American mixed media painter from Miami, FL. She received her Bachelors of Arts & Sciences from Loyola University New Orleans in 2006. She completed international workshops at Firenze Arti Visive, Florence and Metafora, Barcelona. In 2009, she received her Post Baccalaureate Diploma from SMFA, Boston. She received her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2012; upon completion, she was awarded the C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship. Nuñez is the host and producer of the Sunday Painter podcast on Jolt Radio, now in the show’s fourth year of production and a recipient of Locust Project’s 2018 Wavemaker Grant. In 2019 she completed a year residency at the Deering Estate. She currently has a solo show Internal Vacation with Lobo del Mar gallery.

ARTIST LINKS

Website:  www.alexnunez.net

Instagram: @shockingly_unambitious, @the_sunday_painter

Podcast: www.sundaypainter.net