Carlos Alarcón

In his unflinching paintings and drawings, Carlos Alarcón focuses on the face and figure, through which he conveys expressions of anxiety and pain, and the effects on humans of war and politics. He is equally attuned to the bellicose political environment of his native Colombia and the conflicting and variable emotions that compose our psychological landscape. Working in series, he renders his figures in black, white, and shades of gray, and, in his compositions focused on war and rebellion, passages of crimson. In a recent series, titled “Up Against Nothing” (2013), for example, Alarcón presents large-scale, intimate portraits of men and women, their faces wrought with worry and unhappiness. Other series feature images of men dressed as toy soldiers, looking not menacing and strong but confused, slump-shouldered, and absurd.