JULIAN ADON ALEXANDER

Up North

April 30th - May 27th 2022

Swivel Gallery is pleased to present “Up North”, the debut solo exhibition of Julian Adon Alexander. The exhibition brings together twenty nine of the artist’s intricate graphite drawings produced over the course of the past year; on one hand chronicling his life in conjunction with time,  and on the other his pencil somehow evades it with the work’s ethereal sensibility.  Alexander captures quotidian moments and the beauty in the mundane. One can consider and relate to this temporal arrangement with life in a Generation Z upbringing that has lived through strident times; and somehow remains resilient with a determination to cope, adapt, and change the world around them.

Alexander’s raw images of his peers, his surroundings and himself subvert indoctrinated dispositions to depict an honest portrayal of life for Black and Brown Americans living in and around New York. He marks the present in a dizzying array of imagery that fixes its lens on the minutiae of life and the ephemerality of connectedness in everyday moments. The essence of these works lie in their humility, where accumulated crosshatches become shadows, sidewalks, reflections; fractions of daily life that are often overlooked in our everyday hustles become our central focus. His renderings seem to catch his subject’s in mid-sentence or mid-gesture, leaving us afraid to blink in fear the moment will leave.

The body of work encompasses a coming of age journey where the passage of time is marked in nuanced memories. The artist’s magic lies in the subtlety of his perspective, one that cannot be taught but rather is only accrued through deep grace and empathy. The candid scenes and intimate portraits are rendered with such delicacy that the viewer is drawn in, relating to the works as their own lived experiences. The sitters gaze directly out, engaging the viewer, or face completely away, lost in their own world. This juxtaposition highlights the dichotomy of intimacy and distance during the pandemic, and moreover our everyday complicated yet beautiful relationships with life, and with people.