March 2- April 14, 2018
Disposable Indispensable
Jaime Alvarez at Taller Puertorriqueño
Photographing found and discarded objects, Jaime Alvarez’s Consumption explores intimacy, sentimentality, and loss. The show stems from his 2016 residency at RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency) which operates out of a recycling center in North Philadelphia. There, by the process of manipulation and composition, he continued his investigation into the resonance of abandoned objects that were begun in Memento, an earlier series of work.
Alvarez shapes these discarded items by painting them either white or black, creating a uniformity among them that helps the viewer to focus on each object’s weight, contours, and the emotions evoked. Although many of these objects are small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, his photographs are monumental in size.
The exhibition also includes an installation comprised of the objects that appear in the photographs on the walls, creating a dialogue between the objects themselves and their photographic representations. By focusing on discarded objects, Alvarez calls attention to what gets lost in our increasingly throwaway society
As part of the exhibition, there was a free workshop with RAIR, Disposable and Indispensable, on March 24, 2018.
