Alex Becerra

Working across painting, sculpture and performance, Alex Becerra’s practice emits an irresistible sense of unbridled pleasure. His series Descarga Heavy (Spanish slang for a jam session), encapsulates this sense of release. Becerra playfully meshes oils and acrylics, creating these texturally rich, almost glutenous paintings. Riffing as a jazz musician would between scales, keys and melodies, Becerra draws on divergent art historical influences, his Mexican American heritage, and habitual scenes of modern-day Los Angeles. Stylistic nods to painters from the Expressionists, Colourists and Modernists such as Jörg Immendorff, Jonathan Meese, Werner Büttner, Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, and Francis Bacon emerge in his painterly style. Depicting tableaux of carnivals, portraits of musicians or emulating the varying detritus of advertising posters found in LA, the palette in his works seamlessly seeps into gradations of colour, whilst retaining the clarity of brushstrokes laden with paint. Echoing the practical methodology of these painterly forefathers, he produces deeply personal, high-octane and jubilant works. ...

Various Small Fires (Los Angeles /Dallas /Seoul) began as a series of conversations with artists and curators in Esther Kim Varet’s Venice Beach kitchen while working on her doctoral dissertation. VSF debuted in Hollywood as an official gallery in 2015 with a roster of artists and its current Johnston MarkLee Architects-designed building. The Hollywood gallery contains three exhibition spaces, a unique sound corridor, and an outdoor gallery. VSF’s exhibition program explores several curatorial lines: climate, equality, and an international conversation. The gallery is known for offering artists debut shows, creating intergenerational conversations among the artists on its roster, and solidifying artists’ legacies within art history. In 2019, VSF opened a second location in the Hannam neighbourhood of Seoul, South Korea, followed recently this Spring by VSFs third outpost in Dallas, Texas. While Varet has very personal connections to both locations, they are also superlative art communities. These expansions emphasise the gallery’s commitment to innovation and global dialogue in the twenty-first century. In 2021, VSF became a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). ...