Beacon sculptor distills the human form
Turning the corner into a hallway at the KuBe Arts Center in Beacon, Emil Alzamora noticed something awry with one of his statues. A miscreant had dripped liquid on the androgynous figure that emerges from — and seems to stand over — the stomach of another prone body, leaving residue on the latter’s face.
Just then, a passerby stopped to praise the work and ask if the blotch represented tears. No, Alzamora said, someone messed with it. The vandal also poured liquid down the standing figure’s posterior.
Thus are the risks for artists who expose their work to the public without barriers. Alzamora, a Beacon resident born in Lima, Peru, is represented locally by Ethan Cohen, who operates the KuBe Art Center, including gallery spaces in the former high school’s science wing. That’s where Alzamora’s latest show, Irrational Experiments, is on display through Oct. 18. (The artist is also represented by the Pontone Gallery in London and Karen Imperial in San Francisco.)
The exhibit’s title is apt. Alzamora is tough to pigeonhole. He’s a tinkerer whose hodgepodge humanoids often mash up materials like wood, steel and plaster. Found objects are jumbled with arms or legs reclaimed from previous pieces that he judged “didn’t feel right.”
Blank facial expressions are a recurring theme, especially on his many masks. According to the gallery notes, the work is “simultaneously anonymous and universally representative.”
Some of the faces, like “Mask II,” would be fitting at a Buddhist monastery, but the emotionless “Head IV” encapsulates the approach, where acid rain seems to have eroded some of the features, resulting in a faded, ghostly visage. “Head II” features a cracked skull resting on a pedestal.
Alzamora uses his fingers or the tongs of a plastic fork to create swirling, three-dimensional figures that look like whirlwinds but also can resemble the heads of unraveling mummies. The exhibit’s oil-on-wood-panel paintings suggest silhouettes sans discernable features.
All the work is completed by hand, sometimes aided by cast-rubber tools that Alzamora creates. Even at his most abstract, a human form is discernible in the white statue “From the Lonosphere to the Sea Bed” and “The Centenarian,” a block of wood with an “arm” tacked onto what resembles a torso.
Viewed at the right angle, the epoxy and cast-aluminum work “Rabbit” resembles a body. The long ear could be one of Alzamora’s cartoonish arm appendages. For some of his more recognizable bodies, Alzamora attaches a hand to a hip. In “Hands I,” a pair made of plaster connected by copper wire dangles from a hook.
The work is evocative, but some pieces are borderline disturbing, like the dead lamb on a windowsill. The angst-ridden, one-armed “Reclining Man” sits crumpled on the floor with his torso cut in two and holding his head as if he’s had enough.
In his studio on the bank of Fishkill Creek, Alzamora generates a large volume of diverse works, from small masks to heavy sculptures, though a through-line connects the output. “I take a collage-type approach to my entire outlook,” he says. “There’s no art that I won’t try.”
The Ethan Cohen Gallery is located at the KuBe Art Center, 20 Kent St., in Beacon. Gallery tours are offered at 2 p.m. on Saturdays; see ecfa.com.
