Nando Alvarez-Perez, NADA New York installation view, Booth P23

Booth p23

Location:
548 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011

VIP and Press Preview:
Thursday, May 2, 10-4pm

Public Hours:
Thursday, May 2, 4-7pm
Friday, May 3, 11-7pm
Saturday, May 4, 11-7pm
Sunday, May 5, 11-5pm

For NADA New York 2024, Rivalry Projects will present new photographic works by Buffalo-based artist Nando Alvarez-Perez (b. Buffalo, NY 1988). Creating complex in-camera assemblages of objects found in thrift stores or on the street, theoretical texts, movies, currency, and other recognizable cultural detritus, Alvarez-Perez’s unique photographs offer a meditation on the long term effects of globalization, deindustrialization, and the financialization of the American economy. 

Three large-scale photographs anchor the presentation and delve into the post-war American matrix of kitsch and avant-garde, spectacle and political action. Several objects recur throughout the works: polaroids of political events photographed on screens (9/11, January 6th, etc.), that invert the apparent truthiness of the snapshot photograph; cut outs of American presidents’ heads; visual art references; 90s era films that reflect the American obsession with the so-called “end of history”; and American currency, all of which test the illusionary limits of our political imagination. 

Steel, produced locally in Buffalo, NY, will line the back wall of the booth, and recalls the history of robust industry that fueled the region’s economy for over 100 years. While this work is informed by the ongoing history and economic struggles of a specific region, it mirrors larger national and international structural changes. It questions how the richness of our visual images seem to exist in inverse proportion to our lived experience of austerity. Furthermore, it highlights the apparently unconsidered surfaces of our material world to reflect the American empire’s political economy on the cusp of imminent change.

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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 in Photography. 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 Light Work, 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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