Andrius Alvarez-Backus

“Desastre!”

Solo Exhibition curated by Nick Capasso
The Fitchburg Art Museum
June 23rd, 2023–September 17th, 2023

Installation view of "Desastre!" by Andrius Alvarez-Backus

"Andrius Alvarez-Backus is a multi-media artist from Lancaster, Massachusetts. His deeply evocative work is informed by images and objects from his Filipino heritage that bear the weight of centuries of colonialism. The artist employs multiple aesthetic strategies to create visual metaphors for tension, anxiety, and a sense of impending disaster. His work across media is rooted in collage. He layers, juxtaposes, and stitches together found objects and natural materials from The Philippines that include architectural details, feathers, grasses, and bamboo, in compositions that often seem precarious or fragmented.

He also creates a sense of anxiety through dualities: a color palette that contrasts earth tones with acid yellow, orange, and gold; hard and soft materials; conflations of architecture and painting; symmetry vs. asymmetry; and images that appear simultaneously representational and abstract. And, he strives to make wholes of scraps, to bring order to a wide variety of materials and images, all fraught with historical and psychological implications. All of this is made visually eloquent by the artist’s mastery of materials, his ability
to create beauty, and a certain poetic understatement."

—Nick Capasso, Fitchburg Art Museum Director