Tonight's fabulous queer artist feature is @albie.cartagenes
Artist Statement:
My name is Albie Cartagenes. My Art Practice is an introspection of the emotional and physical experiences of the male queer body. Bringing a contemporary representation of the gay experience by examining intimate lived moments, channeling personal experiences of romance, pain, love and a look into the formation of identity in a society that instrinscistly does not support the queer body. My aim is to bring a more visual and public form of acceptance within society with the artwork without hiding or shying away from the truth of what those experiences are.
The process of the creation of this work is by exploring how identity, intense color arrangement, and the human body come together with nature, to create a prolific and constant changing definintion of the queer individual. An emphasis on color is an important aspect of creating a more dramatized and exagerated interpretation of the queer experiences as a way to reflect the exageration of what society assumes of the queer body. I pull the intense color from the color pallets of the Brazilian Modernism Art Movement in connection to my history as a first generation Brazilian - American. Appropriating the 18th & 19th century classical art styles and renaissance styles of body imagery is a way I bring a sense of similarity to the work, while the dramatics of color tied to my heritage is a discovery of my personal practice to adapt a new contemporary look of these bodies. I am intrigued by the surroundings, the beauty, and symbolism that comes from nature and the effects that has on the composition of the piece in relation to the human body.
I have been altering between painting in a classical style and using a palette knife to give texture. To carve the paint to create reliefs is a method of new art formation, and a way of pushing the construction of traditional painting to affect the display of the artwork. This method allows me the ability to apply and remove paint in a form of artistic process. In many forms my process is one that is in continuous change.
I want to push further beyond the ideas of beauty and into more dominant, and upfront language of the experiences of queers, and sexuality. Playing with the idea of gender, and looking to how the dominant normative culture doesn't go beyond the customary forms of gender roles influenced my desire to show that. I use these representation of the queer experience to challenge the ideas of heternomativity, toxic masculinity, and patricarcal white supremacy. Navigating the world as an artist that falls out of what is considered the norm, I intend to bring a voice to the underrepresented, to move the artworld, along with the general epistemologies of culture towards a place of inclusion, and diversity that is celebrated. I hope to engage an audience that firstly finds themself in the work, and secondly, an audience interested in understanding these experiences.
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