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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Artist Alvaro Barrington paints his memories in his new show, Island Life at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea. Barrington was born in Venezuela, first raised in Grenada, and then at eight years old, came to Brooklyn, where he grew up with an extended network of family. He's now based in London, and has the interesting arrangement of being repped by multiple galleries worldwide. The exhibition is named after an album by Grace Jones, the avant-garde and Jamaican-born singer, actor, and performance artist.

In this show, Alvaro pays homage to Jones with a painting of the iconic album cover. Now this show is full of large scale, still life-esque works, paintings of hibiscus flowers framed in rough-hewn wood and corrugated steel frames, as well as a series of colorful paintings on the convex-- no, the concave side of the steel drums, for series Barrington calls "We Be Jammin" inspired by the t-shirts often sold the tourist visiting the Caribbean.

Island Life is now on view with the Nicola Vassell Gallery at 138 10th Avenue. That's around 18th Street, and it is up through December 21st, and joining me now is Alvaro Barrington. Alvaro, thank you for coming on the show.

Alvaro Barrington: Alison, it's such an honor. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: A little birdy told me that you were really grooving to the music of Lone Bellow.

Alvaro Barrington: I'm such a fan of just anytime you randomly bump into music that you didn't think you were going to hear. It's one of my favorite things in life.

Alison Stewart: Oh. When you walk into the gallery, it was-- I went last night, and it was so fun to go in because it was so cold yesterday in New York, [chuckles] and then you go in the gallery and you're someplace warm. It's like you have been transported. There's a steel drum painted with yellow letters, that say, jammin. It's the first thing that we see when we walk into the gallery. Why did you want that piece to be the first thing gallery goers encounter?

Alvaro Barrington: I just thought it would be a funny first thing to see and also because I thought it would immediately set a stage of what I was trying to play with in the gallery, especially at a show with Nicola who's obviously Jamaican-born and is such an important part of my imagination of what it meant to be an artist. She had been around for some time. She gave me a few excuses to be an artist when it didn't feel like a popular decision. It just felt like a funny introduction to an exhibition.

Alison Stewart: I'm glad you brought Nicola, and we've had her on the show before. Her gallery is one of the few Black women-owned art galleries in New York. How did you first meet her?

Alvaro Barrington: I first knew of her before I met her. I was a young art student in-- I've done art most of my life, but I was an art student at Hunter College, and there wasn't so many Black students at the time in the program, and that was an uphill battle, just in terms of being seen as an artist. She had organized this exhibition called the Black Eye. I went and I just ended up meeting so many artists who today are household names, but back then it wasn't so obvious and it just was like, "Oh, I could continue to do this because there were so many other people who were doing it.

I was a fan, and I always remembered this moment because it was so critical. It felt like a dose of candy when I needed the sweets. I reached out to her at one point and said, "If you ever start a gallery, I would love to show with you." She was like, "Funny enough, I'm actually in the process of starting a gallery." Now here we are. This is our second show together. It just felt like something--

Alison Stewart: Go ahead.

Alvaro Barrington: Oh no, sorry. That was it.

Alison Stewart: We've got a little bit of a delay. I am sorry. I didn't mean to step on you there. My guest is Alvaro Barrington. The name of the new show is Island Life. It's on view at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in 10th Avenue until December 21st. Let's go back into the show and back into the warmth of the show. The "We Be Jammin" series, it's painted on steel drums? When did you get the idea to paint on steel drums? What's something you have to keep in mind when you're painting on that shape?

Alvaro Barrington: I just thought it was a funny surface to paint on, mostly because I grew up in Brooklyn. My mom is from Grenada, so I spent some time there. As a kid, you were given the steel drum as an instrument of tradition to learn how to play. I just thought it was a interesting surface to paint on, because if you're from the islands or if you ever go to carnival, it's such a instrumental part of like how music is formed and it's given birth to so many different musical genres, and that come out of the Caribbean, namely Soca. I just thought it was an interesting surface to play on because of its history.

Then all of a sudden I remembered my folks going back to the Caribbean and giving-- They're from the Caribbean, but for some reason they would get these We Be Jammin shirts. I just thought that was so funny. It was like everything lit up. Wherever they went, they would go on these cruise, and they would stop over at different islands or set stop off in Louisiana or something like that, and they would bring home these We Be Jammin shirts. The memory of it felt funny and interesting for me, so just I thought I would paint these figures on the drums.

Alison Stewart: The drums are painted with bright colors, with black figures, dancing, playing drums, living their best lives. I wondered about the color palette because it seemed to incorporate colors from the Caribbean flags.

Alvaro Barrington: Yes, but they're also the colors that you could find in the We Be Jammin shirt.

Alison Stewart: Oh, it's all about the We Be Jammin shirt. [laughs]

Alvaro Barrington: Yes, kind of but there's also this. It's painted in enamel paint, which is usually used for bright nerdy, but car colors could be enameled or advertising signs are enameled. I thought it was interesting because the shirts are kind of advertisements, the advertisements for the Island Life, or what you get when you-- the tourist version of an Island Life, which is interesting for me, because obviously it meant my parents, and my aunts and them who are from there, has also bought into kind of tourist idea of the Caribbean. It's a really funny type of thing. Not to reduce it, they would also bring back other things, but it was also a part of their new relationship to the Caribbean.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Alvaro Barrington, the new show is called Island Life at the Nicola Vassell Gallery. After the break, we'll talk about the inspiration for the title of the show, as well as some of his floral paintings, these big, beautiful hibiscus flowers. This is All Of It.

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This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Alvaro Barrington. The artist show is called Island Life. It's on view at Nicola Vassell Gallery at 138 10th Avenue. That's around 18th Street, and it is up until December 21st. The title of the show, Alvaro, Island Life, it's a direct reference to the Grace Jones record of the same name from the '80s. What does her music mean to you?

Alvaro Barrington: It's not necessarily her music, it's more about-- One of the things that I became really, really curious about, and this is a part of my practice, is that the Caribbean islands are-- there's so many different places in the world that exist, so many different countries, so many different parts, but for some reason, the Caribbean has managed to have a real global impact on the imagination of the world. You could see it when you go almost anywhere, and if you say the name Bob Marley, someone would know. Or if you say Jamaica, someone would know, but there's so many other parts of the world that people don't have any idea where those places exist.

I was very curious about what it is about the islands in particular that has created this dynamic. I just wanted to explore what is it in the stew that has generated this imagination. Including like how someone like Sidney Poitier who became really the first Black superstar in terms of movies, come from the Caribbean. What was it that allowed him to have that or maybe even one with the first Black art superstar, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Both of his parents are from the Caribbean. His dad's Haitian and mom's Puerto Rican.

I was just very curious and I continue to be very curious about what is it about a Grace Jones, or a Jean-Michel Basquiat, or a Marcus Garvey, or Sidney Poitier. The list goes on and on, and so it's just me trying to figure out exactly what is in those waters.

Alison Stewart: I see, so it's more about her origin than even her music and her motivation.

Alvaro Barrington: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's so interesting. There are a series of paintings that are really beautiful. Some of them are enormous of flowers. Tell us a little bit about these paintings, the origin of them, what attracted you to want to paint something as simple and beautiful as a flower?

Alvaro Barrington: On a very, very simple primal level, I just wanted to paint very beautiful paintings. I think there's something about just seeing something that makes you-- especially in a time like this where it feels like if you're looking at red, somebody might tell you that you're looking at green, and then scream at you.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I hear you.

Alvaro Barrington: [laughs] I just thought I just wanted to make paintings that let people know that they're not crazy. That you're watching, if you were to-- beautiful red Hibiscus flower painting, you'd go, "Oh, it's a beautiful red Hibiscus flower painting. I get it." It's not too complicated, so that's a general motive for me. It's like, okay, well, we're inside a complicated period, it just feels like so many people are lying to us, and we just seem to be receiving information in ways that doesn't seem real anymore or it leaves with a headline. Then in order to find out the truth, you have to go six paragraphs in, which I think it's becomes extremely misleading if you're writing an article and then you bury the truth six paragraphs in knowing that somebody's only going to read the first sentence and have a strong emotional feeling about that. The amount of times I'll see like a New York Times article or any type of article, and it just leads with the headline and hoping that you go through a paywall to then find out what the whole thing says. I think that's created so much of the distrust in the society that we live in. Yes, it just felt very important to just make a painting, sure, that was very, very simple and beautiful.

Alison Stewart: The frames are made of wood nailed together, different pieces, rough-hewn, there's some corrugated steel. How did you arrive at this type of framing for this work?

Alvaro Barrington: Well, the line that I usually talk is that-- when I lived in Grenada with my grandma, my mama came to Brooklyn, realized maybe this isn't the place to raise a kid because it was the '80s, so it's a very different time. She sent me to Grenada to live with my grandma and it was the safest I ever felt. One of my memories is sleeping in my grandma's bed, cuddle under her, listening to the raindrops on the roof.

I remember moving to America and there was always these at the time, this conversation about how many of these countries are poor countries. It was always something that I didn't quite know how to square because I was like, "Here's this country that is being described as very poor, but yet somehow it was the safest I felt." Eventually, as I got older, I realized, oh, there's a bit difference of translation because in America, being poor means you don't have your dignity. It often means that you are considered useless by society, you're a burden. There's a different way in New York and other parts of America treated its poor people, whereas in Grenada at the time, just being poor may have meant you may not be able to afford an iPhone, but you knew that you were going to have food that day, you knew you were going to have a family. You knew that you were able to get an education.

It was a very different relationship that I think many of my Black American friends and other folks couldn't really understand because of just the nature of how in America we engage with working class people. It became something that I immediately began to realize that actually, these memories of just being from the small village, how much I was cherished and cared for and showing love. This wasn't necessarily something that I made up.

I've been fortunate enough to speak to so many different people who can talk about-- even when they can talk about like, "Oh, well, we were in a small place in Atlanta," or something like that. There was also a sense of community that had been disrupted. I've realized that it's not just a fantasy that a lot of people have. That there's something real about it, there's something real about this experience, and also that's why the paintings are so simple and very beautiful because it's not necessarily about a simple life, but there was a simple life happening in those times.

Alison Stewart: You worked at a streetwear store in SoHo. You would commute to Manhattan for school. If there's someone listening to this right now in their studio, an artist, and they need a word of encouragement in, let's say, one minute. What would you tell them?

Alvaro Barrington: I would say go outside and talk to people. You know what I mean?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Alvaro Barrington: Yes. Probably.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Go outside and engage. Don't just get hold up in your thoughts in your head.

Alvaro Barrington: Yes.

Alison Stewart: My guest has been Alvaro Barrington. The name of his show is Island Life. It is on view now at the Nicola Vassell Gallery at 138 10th Avenue. That's at 18th Street, and it is up through December 21st, and take time to look at the simple beauty of the floral paintings for sure. Alvaro, thank you so much for joining us.

Alvaro Barrington: Alison, this was such an honor.

 

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