Candida Alvarez at TBA - Chicago

Memory and personal history suffuse the quirky drawings that made up Candida Alvarez's first solo exhibition in Chicago, as much a meditation on viewing art as it was an act of remembrance. Included were three small works on paper, five fabric pieces and one painting, all interrelated, that intentionally blur the distinctions among genres and mediums, and together fall under the rubric of what the artist (primarily a painter), terms "drawing."

The playful characters that inhabit these works are either unleashed from the artist's imagination or inspired by kitschy keepsakes and childhood toys. In Celia Mia (2000-01), two figures, drawn in black felt-tip marker in a graffitiesque style reminiscent of Jean-Michel Basquiat, occupy a field of pale pink and peach acrylic painted on plastic. The composition is marked by subtle yellow patterns, both floral and geometric, and by bits of reversed text: "Respond," "Make a Commitment," "Will Find the Answer." A mother's Christmas greeting to her "dear Celia" is handwritten in Spanish in the upper right-hand corner. These textual elements suggest a rite of passage, as well as a subliminal directive to the viewer on how to approach works of art.

The drawings on paper were colored-pencil renderings of various tchotchke figurines: a mermaid reclining in a shell, a pair of hands holding a slipper, Babar the elephant. Works in their own right, these drawings are also studies for the more rewarding cloth pieces, 9-by-9-foot expanses in which the same figurines are individually depicted. (The characters of Celia Mia are also represented in two small fabric pieces.) Lovingly stitched from black embroidery floss onto large squares of black cotton, the figures are represented as vaguely discernible silhouettes that emphasize simple lines and bold shapes.

These fabric drawings function as curtains or veils that cloud notions of time and place. In effect, miniature readymades from the private realm of childhood and domestic life are transferred to the larger social space. Animated through handwork and exaggerated scale, they take on an iconic status to become objects of both desire and reverie. The use of black cloth can also be read as a metaphor for dark skin, referencing Alvarez's Latin American heritage, a means by which the artist retains an aspect of self within her memorial investigations.

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