Alex Gardner

California-based Alex Gardner creates artwork that mixes Renaissance techniques with geometry and a palette of black, blue, pink, white, and green

Articles:

"Identity is a central theme for the Afro-Japanese artist, with much of his work featuring anonymous figures painted in a deep, rich black. A rebuke against the fair-skinned bodies he used to habitually paint, Gardner uses skin tone to challenge the ways in which viewers identify with what they see."
“I don’t know if I’m trying to paint black people, but I guess that’s what I’m doing! I’m certainly trying not to paint white people, but I feel like [the bodies] are so black that they can be perceived as not just of African descent,” he says. “Growing up, identity was always an issue because I’m mixed race, but in a broader sense I want the viewer to have non-specific figures in the composition … so they have the chance of seeing themselves and people they know."

"My figures have no facial features as indicators. Hair texture is suspect, wouldn't you say? What black person do you know who is that black? The white viewer wants to connect but can't get past the skin tone and feels a bit alienated. Am I deliberately trying to estrange? My mom is Japanese, by the way. It's multifaceted."

"In a painting, you’re really limited with what you have to express an idea. With representational work, it’s obviously easier to get ideas across, but color is such a major tool in expressing the intangible things like emotion, feeling and mood."

"Was Gardner offering commentary on the ever-fluctuating position of black Americans caught in the throes of history?"

What Youth: For the Love mini-documentary about Alex Gardner's process