Alvaro Barrington Alvaro Barrington

Alvaro Barrington

Venezuelan
b. 1983
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Overview

'When you look at my paintings, you’re encountering parts of my identity. I grew up in a culture where it was really about erasing hierarchies, where we’re all participating in cultural production.'

Born in Venezuela to Grenadian and Haitian migrant workers, Alvaro Barrington was raised between the Caribbean and Brooklyn, New York, by a network of relatives. An unwavering commitment to community informs his wide-ranging practice. While Barrington considers himself primarily a painter, his artistic collaborations encompass exhibitions, performances, concerts, fashion, philanthropy and contributions to the Notting Hill Carnival in London. His approach to painting is similarly inclusive – embracing non-traditional materials and techniques such as burlap, concrete, cardboard and sewing – and infused with references to his personal and cultural history. 

Influence and exchange are crucial to Barrington, who draws upon a host of artistic and cultural references in his work. His personal touchstones include rapper Tupac Shakur and 90s hip-hop culture, jazz and the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey, modernist icons such as Willem de Kooning, Paul Klee, Agnes Martin and Louise Bourgeois, and his art-world peers. His resolutely interdisciplinary approach follows in the footsteps of Robert Rauschenberg’s groundbreaking Combines, which he references by incorporating real objects into the picture plane, including carpets, steel drums, brooms and fans. He is an artist who is continually expanding his constellation of references, inspirations and communities, while always acknowledging the formative role of art history in his practice.

Born in Venezuela to Grenadian and Haitian migrant workers, Alvaro Barrington was raised between the Caribbean and Brooklyn, New York, by a network of relatives. An unwavering commitment to community informs his wide-ranging practice. While Barrington considers himself primarily a painter, his artistic collaborations encompass exhibitions, performances, concerts, fashion, philanthropy and contributions to the Notting Hill Carnival in London. His approach to painting is similarly inclusive – embracing non-traditional materials and techniques such as burlap, concrete, cardboard and sewing – and infused with references to his personal and cultural history. 

Influence and exchange are crucial to Barrington, who draws upon a host of artistic and cultural references in his work. His personal touchstones include rapper Tupac Shakur and 90s hip-hop culture, jazz and the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey, modernist icons such as Willem de Kooning, Paul Klee, Agnes Martin and Louise Bourgeois, and his art-world peers. His resolutely interdisciplinary approach follows in the footsteps of Robert Rauschenberg’s groundbreaking Combines, which he references by incorporating real objects into the picture plane, including carpets, steel drums, brooms and fans. He is an artist who is continually expanding his constellation of references, inspirations and communities, while always acknowledging the formative role of art history in his practice.

For Barrington, painting is a way to experience the world we inhabit and explore the medium’s role within a long tradition of storytelling. His past exhibitions have examined themes of birthing and migration, aspirations in the Black community, mass incarceration and notions of time, as well as self-love and digital identities in isolated conditions. It is essential to him that people are able to encounter art in accessible spaces. One such space is that of Carnival, which he credits as the first fully-formed artistic experience of his life. He began collaborating with Notting Hill Carnival in 2019, when his first One Famalay concert brought Soca artists such as Machel Montano, Skinny Fabulous and others to London. In 2022 he produced Queen of the Caribbean, the official Notting Hill Carnival concert.

Barrington studied at Hunter College in New York and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, later teaching at both of his alma maters, as well as at the Cooper Union in New York. His first solo exhibition, which opened the same year he graduated, was curated by Klaus Biesenbach at MoMA PS1, Queens, in 2017. His work has since been shown in numerous solo and group shows, including GRACE, Tate Britain Comission, London (2024); COME HOME, Art Basel Parcours (2024); Alvaro Barrington: SPIDER THE PIG, PIG THE SPIDER, South London Gallery, London (2021); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021); and through his ongoing Tt x AB collaboration with the painter Teresa Farrell. Following a solo presentation at the London gallery in 2018, Barrington co-curated the exhibition Artists I Steal From with Julia Peyton-Jones at Thaddaeus Ropac London in 2019, with subsequent solo gallery exhibitions in Salzburg (2022), Paris Marais (2021) and Paris Pantin (2023).

Videos

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Alvaro Barrington GRACE, Tate Britain Commission 29 May 2024—26 January 2025
GRACE, Tate Britain Commission
29 May 2024—26 January 2025
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Alvaro Barrington They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY
They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY
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Alvaro Barrington La Vie en Rose
La Vie en Rose
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Alvaro Barrington You don't do it for the man, men never notice. You just do it for yourself, you're the...
You don't do it for the man, men never notice.
You just do it for yourself, you're the fucking coldest
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Alvaro Barrington reflects on Robert Rauschenberg
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Alvaro Barrington; A Focus in Painting at Thaddaeus Ropac London Ely House (2020)
Alvaro Barrington
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Group Exhibition Artists I Steal From
Artists I Steal From
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A Focus on Painting with Katy Hessel
with Katy Hessel
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Frieze Talk | Painting Today Alvaro Barrington, Mandy El-Sayegh, Rachel Jones and Dona Nelson, chaired by Julia Peyton-Jones
Alvaro Barrington, Mandy El-Sayegh, Rachel Jones and Dona Nelson, chaired by Julia Peyton-Jones
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Artist's Eye Alvaro Barrington
Alvaro Barrington

Artworks

Tate Britain Commission (2024)

GRACE is a major new commission by Alvaro Barrington at Tate Britain. Bringing sound, painting and sculpture to the dramatic architecture of Tate Britain's neo-classical Duveen Galleries, Barrington takes visitors on an intimate journey through time and place. Addressing the profound impact that women and their care within Black culture have had on his upbringing and artistic practice, this site-specific installation centres three key figures – his grandmother Frederica, a close friend and sister-figure Samantha and his mother Emelda. Staged in three acts, the installation brings together the artist's personal history, drawing on his experiences of Caribbean carnival culture and memories of his upbringing in Grenada and New York.

Art Basel Parcours (2024)

Coinciding with his Tate Britain commission in London, for Art Basel Parcours Alvaro Barrington presents a recent work returning to his early life growing up in the Caribbean. For his installation entitled Come Home, Barrington has hand-built an architectural structure inside Tropical Zone, 'the No. 1 Super Markets for the Afro and Latin American population of Switzerland', which draws on aspects of family life and his experiences living in the region, celebrating its diverse culture and landscape. 

They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY (2023)

They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY, which was held at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin, is a three-part installation: a monumental self-portrait of Alvaro Barrington’s years growing up in New York, inviting visitors into an exploration of the artist’s personal and cultural memory. The exhibition unfolds across three rooms or ‘chapters’. Each one represents different aspects of the artist’s experiences growing up in New York as the son of Grenadian and Haitian migrant workers, channelled through both the imagery of his own personal history and through references that are part of the collective consciousness.

Museum Exhibitions

News and Press

News and Press