"The Colors of Your Past" Painting Acrylic on Canvas with Paper Accents 2023
67" x 68"
Gus Alva is a Los Angeles based artist representing his South Central roots via structural painting, sculpture, and fashion-textile. In practice, Alva aspires to communicate through his work a love and appreciation for the cultural richness that exists within the vastness of the city.
Alva draws from his architectural familiar—exploring the front-facing infrastructures that act as a canvas for the passing of time and the cover up of its decay. Showcasing works of grand landscape whose elements clash and collaborate in a layering of angles, colors, patterns and textures— a catalogue of elements that Alva has collected and carried with him since adolescence. Each of his pieces is meticulously constructed from raw materials hand-sourced in local hardware stores (Fereterias,) with materials restructured or repurposed from one piece to be utilized in the next.
By creating art in order to strike comfort even while acknowledging the cycles of our reality, Alva’s intention is to share work that delivers the same hope and resilience he carries as a teaching from his experiences in his neighborhood
