Andrew Alba

Region: West

 My work communicates plainly and depicts the experience of being brown in white spaces, while emphasizing how people live their heritage. Borrowing techniques of abstraction from neoexpressionists, my work aims to evoke an emotional response while commenting on our wildly complex sociopolitical present. As a self-taught artist, I create work without the theoretical constraints and critical expectations of the academy. I sculpt using everyday materials from my day job in construction. I like to juxtapose the clean white walls of the gallery against the rough-hewn, everyday materials of the worker. While drop cloths, drywall mud, concrete, and lumber aren’t of archival quality, I am interested in how these materials will enact the inescapable slow decay of blue-collar bodies. My work is for tired working people.