ALEX BECERRA

In a visual reflection on his travels to the Yucatan Peninsula, Alex Becerra’s PSYCHOMANIA presents a fantastical landscape which explores the complexities and curiosities of the human condition. Across three large-scale canvases, a terrain inspired by the artist’s emotional experience encountering the vibrant scenery, heritage, and folklore of the Yucatan, invites the viewer through a vivid portal of contrasting pigments and rich textures.

Across his body of work, Becerra’s maximalist approach engages an improvisational dialogue between the artist and his materials. Whether using a brush, his fingers, a palette knife, or the last drops squeezed from a tube of paint, Becerra spontaneously fills every inch of his canvases. Within Chiccharon ( Happy Pretty ), the painted scene brims with the dense greenery of an untamed jungle. A tangle of striking reds and oranges cuts through the overlapping layers of lush greens, blues, and yellows in bursts of unexpected intensity, drawing the viewer into a mesmerizing scene ripe with harmony and unpredictability. The combination of both abstract and representational elements suggests a controlled chaos, granting points of entry, pockets of respite and clarity for the eye and the mind.

The spontaneous brush strokes and vibrant colours of Becerra’s canvases reflect the artist’s aesthetic investigations into the ecstasy and catharsis of creation, as an experience of both raw freedom and extreme vulnerability. In the painting Bathers, Becerra references art historical depictions of the natural world as a setting for soothing, cleansing, and rejuvenation. Amidst hues of deep purple and bright orange, the outlines of four female figures stand out above the canvas in neon green, allowing the backdrop of the jungle to seep through, their forms are entwined in a mess of leaves, absorbed into the pulse of their surroundings. Inspired by the folklore of the Yucatan, the painting evokes a spiritual engagement with the land, channeling both the tranquility of the jungle and the internal conflicts it stirs.

Throughout the gallery space, the jungle of PSYCHOMANIA serves to mirror the emotional landscape of creation, a realm of entangled joy and frustration, curiosity and anxiety, so deeply intertwined as to become barely discernible from one another. Through an aesthetic exploration of both his internal environment and his travel experiences, Alex Becerra beckons the viewer to uncover the stories embedded within each painted gesture, daring us to lose ourselves within a labyrinth of unexplored consciousness.

Alex Becerra (b. 1989, Piru, California, USA) lives and works in Los Angeles. Working in painting, drawing, and sculpture, he explores the way we view modernity, often chopped up into bits and sliced together.

Rooted in the deep history of Modern European painting, specifically influenced by German Neo-Expressionism, Becerra has an unparalleled ability in manoeuvering oil paint as he layers it on in thick, sweeping lines of impasto raised inches off the canvas. His thoughtful compositions incorporate all classical types of painting from self-portraiture and the female nude to still life and genre scenes, all dotted with recurring context-specific objects like beer bottles and car rims.

Seemingly quotidian, these symbols carry personal significance relating to his adolescence in Southern California and subsequent entrance into the international world of art. In this way, Becerra’s highly referential work bears a distinct aesthetic and energetic vibrancy unique to the artist.

Becerra has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Timonier, New York, NY; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL; Karma International, Beverly Hills, CA and Zürich, Switzerland; Weiss Berlin, Germany, and One Trick Pony, Los Angeles, CA. Selected group exhibitions include VETA by Fer Francés , Madrid, Spain; Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Kunstraum Potsdam, Germany; Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Journal Gallery, New York, NY; Richard Telles Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Journal Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Ben Maltz Gallery, Westchester, CA; and more.

PSYCHOMANIA is Alex Becerra’s first solo exhibition with Wilding Cran Gallery.