Memorydreams | Alex Kuno

Over his many years of exhibiting at the Rogue Buddha, we have had the pleasure of observing an ever evolving body of work which has bore witness to Kuno’s personal growth and evolution. Techniques, mediums and subject have continually morphed and expanded, culminating in transcendent exhibit after transcendent exhibit.

As his artist statement attests, Kuno’s most recent works present a new and potentially uplifting vantage point by which he approaches what can often times be an absurd and cruel world. While the chaos of the world was often times fodder for his creative expression, Kuno is happily prepared to distance himself from such personal paradigms as he makes himself ever more vulnerable to love and the pursuit of healing, connectivity and contentment.

While hope may in fact be present throughout his newest body of work, Alex Kuno is still as imaginative and wonderfully “bizarre” as ever through his imagistic creations. Human-esque creatures bleed and melt in tantalizing color and form with the world of flora and fauna that surround them. Presented in a space that is spaceless and in a time that knows no time, each painting is an entire world unto itself, myopic in scale but boundless in potential.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Like pretty much everyone everywhere, this has been a particularly tumultuous and transformative couple of years for me personally, pockmarked by the losses of multiple friends and colleagues to cancer or Covid or despair, and I’ve had to acknowledge the reality that I’ll be only getting more news like that as I approach 50 and middle age sets in and I’ll inevitably have my own diagnoses to contend with. However, just as I was preparing myself to drift into an increasingly uncertain and darkening future, I fell in love. I’ve approached the new body of work in “Memorydreams” almost like some early explorer stumbling on an alien shore, sketching and cataloging the emotional flora and fauna of fleeting memories and feelings during this time in my life, as the fog clears and a new horizon reveals itself.

To convey this emotional cacophony visually, considering the appropriate medium was a central issue. Acrylics felt too plastic-y, oils felt too permanent and formal, and my watercolor technique might not have allowed for the improvisational approach the project needed. I ultimately chose gouache for its combination of fragility and permanence: properly protected (I seal each piece in wax) gouache artwork can last forever, but because the unprotected paint reactivates with water regardless of how old it is there’s a feeling of vulnerability and ephemerality lurking within the very molecular structure of each image. Being viscerally aware that the paint could all be washed away or tainted at any point in the painting process before they’re varnished makes each finished piece feel more alive and present and their hasty construction makes them almost feel like they’re still moving, as if the frolicking creatures and fleshy flowers and globs of pink matter depicted here would have just slithered or dripped off of the paper and escaped until they were hurriedly captured and sealed into place.

A lot of my work over the past 20 years has often been sarcastic, apocalyptic satirical fairy tales about post-9/11 paranoia and American Exceptionalism, or my own nagging personal fears and anxieties or something along those lines. Some experiences over the past couple of years, though, have taught me that maintaining that level of cynicism and angst has become tiring and less interesting to me. I started to lean toward new themes, like the search for pleasure and connection and contentment. Now I find myself exploring the process of healing in that search; the yearning for it, the need for it, the pain and fear and ugliness of it, and to finally allow myself the chance to stretch out and explore these new worlds that have been here the whole time.

- Alex Kuno