NEW YORK, NY.- Marc Straus presents Emil Alzamora’s inaugural one-person exhibit at the gallery. Emil Alzamora (b. 1975, Peru) sculptures represent the human form reduced to its purist elements, as though distilled and honed. Elongated and devoid of identifiable human characteristics such as eyes, facial features and hair, these emotionally charged works are at once anonymous and at the same time universally representative.

They are both modernist and surreal and at the same time of the moment. These spare figures follow in the footsteps of Giacometti, who more than any 20th century artist found a personal and eccentric language to bring emotional power to a spare sinewy figure. Yet Alzamora’s stark refined surfaces inevitably bring to mind Arp, Archipenko, and of course, Brancusi. Tall shoulders, but Alzamora has undeniably found a unique voice that is immediately recognizable. The work has a quiet breathlessness.

Alzamora presents four new bronze figures for this exhibit, each seemingly in repose also at a crucial moment. FORCE MAJEURE is seated with legs splayed. At the end of a run? It is the pause in the narrative, the interstice, weighed by the before and after we are left to consider. In two new gypsum works figures seem wrapped as if mummified and yet these are not quiescent works; they are enlivened by the body’s contortion.

Alzamora’s works have been exhibited in numerous institutions worldwide, including The Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York; The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill; The Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas; The United Nations Building, New York; and Pepsico World Headquarters, New York. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, The L Magazine, El Diario, Juxtapoz, High Fructose, Cool Hunting and elsewhere. In 2014, he was the recipient of two major outdoor commissions, one on the Hudson River waterfront in Peekskill, New York, and another at Seolbong Park. Icheon, South Korea.

Emil Alzamora is represented by MARC STRAUS, New York.