Images of bacchanalian dinner tables circled by friends are diaristic, even cinematic, while more intimate moments between the artist and his husband invite the viewer into the quiet corners of their East Austin home. Family and home coalesce in the artist’s moody paintings of camaraderie and reverie. Like the expansive notion of family within queer communities, home is a concept that brims with possibility for Alvarez. According to Alvarez, the Odyssey epic “tells a compelling story of constructing a lived experience … through his struggle to return to where he is from.” RF. Fittingly, the show’s central theme is perhaps the Western canon’s most famous homecoming: that of Odysseus. “The longer the branches, the deeper the roots.”Įight paintings (all 2023) from his upcoming New York solo debut, " Eros," at Soho’s Alanna Miller gallery, visualize his journey establishing a life-specifically, an openly queer one-in Texas after stints in Connecticut, New York, and Los Angeles. “If you want to know yourself, you should leave where you are from,” he tells CULTURED. The couple’s Austin dwelling, where the smell of wildflowers mingles with the sound of crickets, inspired his most recent paintings.
The 35-year-old painter left Texas at 18 with the firm intention of never returning, but it was back home on a Christmas visit in 2013 that he met the man who would eventually be his husband. Alvarez, the definition of home is in ceaseless transformation. Alvarez by Mackenzie Smith Kelley. All images courtesy of the artist and Alanna Miller.įor RF.
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