Katrin Alvarez

German artist Katrin Alvarez’s mixed media works are both troubling and engaging, as they combine Salvador Dali’s surreal imagery and the jarring ruptures of Hannah Höch’s Dada collages. Most of Alvarez’s pieces incorporate two- and three-dimensional materials, creating a tension between surface and relief, representation and abstraction. This tension makes her artworks recognizable to a point, yet impossible to interpret completely.

This incongruity in Alvarez’s materials extends to the thematic contents of her work. She uses a surrealist’s vocabulary, dealing in the myths and archetypes of dreams and psychoanalysis. Yet amidst the images of modern society’s melancholy and dark psychic underbelly, Katrin Alvarez incorporates deeply personal narratives. She treats her private issues through her art, all the while appealing to culture-wide problems. Not only do her images depict her inner demons, the disjointed ways she juxtaposes these personal problems with cultural crises suggests that the two are fundamentally related. Representations of her small inner universe always seem to reflect the dynamics of the greater whole.

Color of Reverie
Reception: Thursday June 26, 2008 6-8 PM
Exhibition Dates: 6/26/2008 - 7/17/2008

Invitation to Katrin Alvarez's exhibition

Unexpected Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 24" x 24" $2500 Unexpected Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 24" x 24" $2500	Streetgirl Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 10" x 13" $1800 Streetgirl Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 10" x 13" $1800
Easy Prey Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 24" x 24" $2500 Easy Prey Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 24" x 24" $2500	Slums of the Mind Oil & Mixed Media on Board 16" x 12" $1800 Slums of the Mind Oil & Mixed Media on Board 16" x 12" $1800
Dies Irae Oil & Mixed Media on Board 39" x 47" $3400 Dies Irae Oil & Mixed Media on Board 39" x 47" $3400	The Painful Reality of Human Relations Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 35" x 47" $3275 The Painful Reality of Human Relations Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 35" x 47" $3275
Richard Yates Oil & Mixed Media on Board 32" x 32" $3000 Richard Yates Oil & Mixed Media on Board 32" x 32" $3000	Dona Nobis Pacem Oil & Mixed Media on Board 39" x 39" $2800 Dona Nobis Pacem Oil & Mixed Media on Board 39" x 39" $2800
Serenity of Being Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 32" x 47" $3200 Serenity of Being Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 32" x 47" $3200	Chain of Childhood Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 47" x 35" $3300 Chain of Childhood Oil & Mixed Media on Canvas 47" x 35" $3300