“I'm interested in the entire spectrum of human emotion. I like the romanticisation of life. I'm also an extreme realist and borderline pessimistic.” —Alex Gardner

Installation view of It’s Been Years at The Hole, EXPO CHICAGO, 2019

California-based figurative artist Alex Gardner received a BFA from California State University in 2011. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at The Hole in New York (2020), as well as in Los Angeles, Hong Kong and London, as well as at the Long Beach Museum of Art in March 2021.

Afro-Japanese Gardner’s surreal paintings portray androgynous, faceless silhouettes. Polished ebony black bodies, devoid of any facial features, reflect no race and yet every race convincingly. Sensual and sleek, absent of any usual cultural signifiers such as gender, skin, clothes and environment, the moving depiction of a gentle embrace in It’s Been Years offers a snapshot of an intimate moment. Entangled limbs and smooth featureless faces simultaneously evoke pleasurable feelings of the familiar and the dark twinge of the uncanny, speaking to issues of identity, desire, ethics and anxiety. Against subtle colour gradients and thoughtful tonal shifts, Gardner’s enigmatic subjects speak to universal human experience and invite viewers into their mysterious world.

The artist in his studio
- Provenance
  The Hole, New York
  Acquired from the above by the present owner