Nando Alvarez-Perez: Bellona, Barely Fair, Chicago, IL, 2023

BARELY FAIR

April 15-23, 2023

Location: Color Club,
4146 N. Elston Avenue, Chicago, IL

Vernissage:
Friday, April 14, 2023: 6-10pm

Public Days:
April 15-23, 2023

Rivalry Projects is thrilled to announce our participation in Barely Fair, Chicago, with a solo presentation of new works by Buffalo-based artist Nando Alvarez-Perez. The 2023 iteration of Barely Fair will be taking place April 14-23 at Color Club in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood.

WORKS

ABOUT THE WORK

Alvarez-Perez’s installation is a diorama consisting of various locations in Buffalo, NY, which here acts as an uncanny double for Bellona—a city cut off from the rest of the world following an unknown catastrophe—from Samuel R. Delaney’s 1975 science fiction novel Dhalgren. It has been speculated that Bellona is a stand-in for Buffalo, influenced by Delaney’s brief tenure at the University at Buffalo in the early 1970s. Here, Bellona is an analogical launching pad to consider the long term effects of globalization, deindustrialization, and the financialization of the American economy. Buffalo’s post-industrial landscape is littered with junk stores, billboards advertising Reddit-driven pump and dump schemes, real estate speculation, and shabby infrastructure long abandoned by austere municipal budgets. The post-industrial city is a city out of time, a flickering ghost of an American past, an emanation from the American future.

Thank you to Erin Toale of New City Art Magazine for including our presentation of Nando Alvarez-Perez: Bellona in the

Top 5 Booths at Barely Fair 2023 list.

ABOUT BARELY FAIR

Barely Fair is an international art fair operated by Julius Caesar. The invitational fair presents a tiny peek inside the programming of thirty contemporary art galleries, project spaces, and curatorial projects during “Art Week” in Chicago. Included spaces will exhibit works in 1:12 scale booths built to mimic the design of a standard fair.

Barely Fair will open with a vernissage on April 14th, 2022 at Color Club. The fair will run with daily hours through the weekend, and be open for gallery hours and by appointment through April 23rd. See our homepage for detailed hours. 

Julius Caesar is an artist-run project space established in 2008. An ever-evolving group of artists acts as co-directors and at present is Josh Dihle, Tony Lewis, Roland Miller, and Kate Sierzputowski.

About the Artist

Nando Alvarez-Perez (b. 1988) investigates the individual's relationship to the vast territory of history. He received a BA in Film studies from CUNY Hunter in 2011 and a MFA from SFAI in 2014. Alvarez-Perez has exhibited at Lydian Stater Gallery, NY, NY, Buffalo Central Terminal, Buffalo, NY, Interface Gallery, Oakland, CA, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA, Untitled Art Fair, San Francisco, CA, and Material Art Fair, CDMX, among many others. Alvarez-Perez was a resident of Lightwork, Syracuse, NY in 2022. His practice extends to his work as a founding director of The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, an art and education non profit that models how culture can sustain communities through focused, practical engagements with contemporary art, and as editor-in-chief of Cornelia, a visual art review published three times a year for the Western New York and Southern Ontario region. He is a visiting professor at Alfred University, living and working in Buffalo, NY. 

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