Alejandro Mazon
Alejandro Mazon: FORGOTTEN STORIES IN THE NEW BARROQUE
Opening Reception: Friday, November 6th, 5-8pm
Artist Statement
My painting practices unfold like a baroque tableau: Saturated hues cascading across the surface, shadows deepening into mystery, and light breaking from the theatrical insistence. In Indian early 19th century painted photographs, I encountered a chromatic language that is both devotional and worldly – pigments that shimmer like jewels, reds that pulse with ritual fervor, blues that echo the infinite. These colors do not merely adorn; they proclaim identity, faith, and belonging with a grandeur that recalls the gilded altar pieces of another hemisphere.
I draw upon a Latin American aesthetic forged in the crucible of Colonial encounters and cultural resilience. Here, color is not passive, but insurgent, a force that resists erasure and insists upon visibility. The Baroque sensibility - with its love of excess, its tension between sacred and profane, its embrace of drama – becomes the bridge between these two worlds. Indian chromatic exuberance meets Latin American intensity, producing paintings that are at once ornate and raw, theatrical yet intimate.
I seek to create images that pulse with contradiction: ornament stripped into its essence, drama distilled into emotional truth. My paintings are not quiet studies but living altarpieces, where color itself becomes a protagonist. Into these works I weave vintage photographs and found objects, relics that carry the patina of time and the weight of forgotten narratives. They serve as anchors of memory, fragments of history that collide with the present, intensifying the sense of hybridism and layering the work with echoes of past lives.
By merging Indian traditions of pigments with Latin American Baroque sensibility, and by embedding the tactile force of found materials, I aim to craft a visual language that speaks of resilience, hybridism, and the human desire for a persistence of memory rendered in luminous tones.
About the artist
Alejandro Mazon is an artist whose life and work embody a rich cultural mixture: Cuban by birth,Spanish by blood, American by choice. This layered identity informs his exploration of color, history and resilience across his practice.
He studied at the school of Visual Arts in New York, under the tutelage of Cuban painter Juan Gonzalez (1942-1993), a master of hyperrealism and magical realism whose influence shaped Alejandro’s early approach to painting. During this formative period, Alejandro was also briefly connected to Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), sharing the restless energy of the underground New York Art Movementof the late 70s and 80s. These friendships and encounters immersed him in a scene defined by experimentation, hybridity, and defiance of convention.
After an intense period of artistic growth, Alejandro stepped away from painting for a decade, only to return with renewed urgency in the midst of the AIDS Epidemic. This return marked a profound shift in his work, infusing it with themes of mortality, resilience, and the power of color as testimony.
Working primarily in painting, Alejandro integrates vintage photographs and found objects into his compositions, layering memory and material presence. His aesthetic draws from the chromatic traditions of India, the dramatic intensity of the Spanish Baroque, and the stripped-back authenticity of minimalism. Through this fusion, he crafts works that are both ornate and raw, theatrical yet intimate.
Alejandro’s paintings are not quiet studies but living Altarpieces, where color itself becomes a protagonist. Rooted in his transitional identity, and shaped by historical rupture, his art bridges geographies and histories, offering a visual language that is deeply personal yet universally resonant.
Opening Reception, Friday, November 6th, 5:00-8:00pm
Exhibition dates: November 6 – December 4, 2026
Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm