Alex Becerra at LEVY.DELVAL

Artist: Alex Becerra

Exhibition title: Dollar Store Colors & Bad Taste

Venue: LEVY.DELVAL, Brussels, Belgium

Date: September 11 – October 24, 2015

Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and LEVY.DELVAL, Brussels

Levy.Delval is pleased to present “Dollar Store Colors & Bad Taste” a show by Los Angeles based artist Alex Becerra; his first exhibition with the gallery. Becerra will present a suite of new paintings, drawings and sculptures that revolve around 99 Cent store colors and taste. The central motif of Becerra’s paintings is the interest in the human figure and his everyday surroundings. Grotesque, comic-like characters are part of his understanding of the human being and how they function within the discourse of painting. Becerra’s figures always stay in a strange abeyance: at first glance grotesque woman, waving hands and clumsy Crocs can be taken as signs of unconcern but then the paintings cause a feeling similar to compassion. Full of relish he transforms them with the help of form and color into overreaching expressions. Becerra’s aesthetic mannerisms exchange these values of perfection and exactness for an appreciation for personal idiosyncrasy. Either with sculpture, paint or ink and pastel, Becerra shows us his explicit choices to avoid traditions of balance and legibility. The over saturated pastel shades and the just slightly unexpected color choices of his palette undercut perfunctory and direct drawing. His works take on a surrealist quality as they often appear as the products an undefinable consciousness, rife with interruptions of sex, violence and sheer arbitrariness.

This is the first solo exhibition of Alex Becerra at Levy.Delval. Born in Piru in 1989, he lives and works in Inglewood, California. He has had solo exhibitions at ltd los angeles, Los Angeles; Age of Art Multiples, Los Angeles; Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles. His group exhibitions include Wonderloch-Kellerland, Berlin; Shoot the Lobster, New York; Ditch Projects, Oregon; Ms. Barber, Los Angeles; Ben Maltz Gallery, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. He is the founder of the experimental project space Lexis Of Inglewood.