BERLIN.- Weiss Berlin is presenting Yes Yes Yes & Pink Flamingo , Alex Becerras first exhibition with the gallery. This new body of works comprises paintings, airbrush drawings and sculptural works. Becerras viciously grotesque universe clearly locates itself in the history of European, and yes, German, painting. Alex Becerra's picture planes are heavy with unbounded, massy forms of oil paint. Working in traditional figurative genres, his still lifes, portraits, nudes have been developed from an incessant practice of drawing in various media including graphite, ink, ballpoint pen, or airbrush. The works' depth and weight has been built up in multiple layers by a process of an adventurous and determined search for the right palette, the right composition, the right line. Paint has been thoughtfully applied and reworked; the airbrush gun was operated with masterly tenderness and expertise.
In its intensification of modernist tropes the group of paintings in Yes Yes Yes & Pink Flamingo brings expressive gesture and emphatic materiality to the discipline of painting along with references to macho clichés and occasional obscenities. Beer bottle sculptures are scattered about illustrations of everyday objects, female genitalia, auto repair shops, and guns. At the same time, Becerra's work cannot help but display sensitivity, vulnerability, intimacy, and desire. Portrayed in a lusciously green forest, Fletch, Becerras white German shepherd, keeps the shady nocturnal figures depicted in the other works company.
Alex Becerra (*1989 in Piru, California) lives and works in Los Angeles. His work has been shown at ltd los angeles; Artist Curated Projects, Los Angeles and at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and has been covered in the Los Angeles Times , Frieze , Zoo Magazine , and Modern Painters . Alex Becerra plays in the band Los Tres Pericos and will be giving tattoos based on his drawings on the opening weekend of the show.
Yes Yes Yes & Pink Flamingo is the second exhibition at Weiss Berlin. The gallery shows contemporary art, predominantly by artists living and working in Los Angeles and New York. Among the artists shown by the the gallery are Elif Erkan, Alex Becerra, Buck Ellison, Rosha Yaghmai, Keith Mayerson, Evan Nesbit, and Celeste Dupuy-Spencer.