Alvaro Barrington They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY

18 October 2023—27 January 2024

Paris Pantin

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They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY is a three-part installation: a monumental self-portrait of Alvaro Barrington’s years growing up in New York. The exhibition invites the visitor into an exploration of the artist’s personal and cultural memory: what Barrington describes as ‘a love letter to the nyc streetscape of my youth in the form of an art installation.’

Growing up in NYC i would go to stores before school buy albums like Jay z or Biggie go buy a brand new outfit. I would walk from 5th ave across central park listening to Tupac or JayZ or Biggie with a brand new pair of jordans on a prada outfit a coogi outfit a Sean John outfit. Everyday was exciting to come to school with a new outfit no matter if i sleep on the street that night i came to school fresh. We would go to the garden to watch the Knicks the bulls to see Jordan tell us we could fly. I would spend most of my days listening to rappers hanging out with friends on the block, meeting girls in soho etc. One day i picked up breakfast at tiffanys at strand bookstore in union square and i realized the nyc i was experiencing in the 90/2000s was what truman copete wrote about in Breakfast at Tiffanys. The soho lower east side streets my friends and I hung around in was the soho Andy Warhol and Basquiat and Madonna created and here i was in the legacy of new generation one formed by the soundtrack of hip hop. —Alvaro Barrington, October 2023

Listen to the artist playlist for the exhibition.

Watch a video of the exhibition in which the artist discusses his memories and his work

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Watch a video of the exhibition in which the artist discusses his memories and his work

If the Michealanglo and renaissance deposited the idea of the individual as a god-given gift, Vemeer and the Dutch birth the promise of global trade through capitalism and the French birth the idea of the arcade that gave way for the storefront…. NYC in that moment birth the reality that aspiration regardless of birth or nation meant one can choose to participate in the culture . And culture was the new luxury. A reality that today feels very much alive in the streets of Paris and all over the world. — Alvaro Barrington, October 2023

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. In THE GARDEN, monumental paintings are housed under arches edged with plants, designed in collaboration with Samuel Bégis.

The titles of Barrington’s GARDEN works are a play on words that brings together the excesses of the streets surrounding Madison Square Garden and Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights (1490–1510). Dedicated to the artist’s celebrated Basketball Paintings, this part of the exhibition taps into the social significance of the sport, both to the artist during his own Brooklyn upbringing, and more widely across marginalised communities.

Alvaro Barrington
The Garden of Dreams, 90s Bulls (L), Oct 2023, 2023
Mixed media on concrete and maple in frame made of milk crates, glass, brass and lights
210 x 165 x 16 cm (82.68 x 64.96 x 6.3 in)

Hieronymus Bosch
The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490—1510 (detail)
Oil on oak panels
205.5 cm × 384.9 cm (81 in × 152 in)
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Getting to play at Madison Square Garden was the pinnacle of your career if you become a basketball player, but if you walk ten blocks in any direction, a lot of things went down, and so it was really interesting to think about how can I make a series of works about you’re right outside the Garden of Eden. I used the basketball court as a kind of parameter between the promises of what you can get and the hope of your neighbourhood and your community. — Alvaro Barrington

Alvaro Barrington

The Garden, Stained Glass for Rodman, Oct 2023, 2023

Stained glass

244 x 183 x 20 cm (96.06 x 72.05 x 7.87 in)

Barrington’s King of Spades works are ‘a play on Cézanne’s Card Players, which is working class card players, except I made the King of Spades Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America’. In making this connection, the artist inscribes his paintings into depictions of working class experience throughout the ages, encouraging the viewer to contemplate these same themes, this time in the setting of New York City as he knew it.

Alvaro Barrington
The Garden King of Spades Eddie (Y), Oct 2023, 2023
Acrylic, oil, enamel on aluminium in steel frame in steel arch with climbing ivy
185 x 120 x 5 cm (72.83 x 47.24 x 1.97 in)

Paul Cézanne
The Card Players, 1894–1895
Oil on canvas
47.5 cm × 57 cm (18.7 in × 22 in)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Alvaro Barrington Les Dames de Got Milk, Oct 2023, 2023 Oil, acrylic, enamel, Flashe, acrylic nails on cardboard and neon...

Barrington entitles another room of his monumental installation THE BLOCK. It is lined with handmade stores – on one side representing Albee Square Mall and on the other Fifth Avenue – tucked behind shutters and windows in various mediums and chainmail curtains. Inside these stores, he instals his new series of works. The artist relates the installation overall to the ‘magic’ arcades of 19th-century Paris, as described by Walter Benjamin in his 1927–40 work of cultural criticism The Arcades Project, which formed the prototype for the modern storefront.

Streets are the dwelling place of the collective. [...] More than anywhere else, the street reveals itself in the arcade as the furnished and familiar interior of the masses. — Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 1927–40

The works on view reflect a cross-pollination of many influences. Barrington channels the bather, an enduring theme in art history which he connects to Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and Édouard Manet, among others, through hip-hop icons, basketball players and film stars. His new paintings include reworkings of David LaChapelle’s photograph of Tupac lying in the bath draped in jewels, and of Holly Golightly in her bathrobe. This chorus of figures comes together to tell the story of Barrington’s New York City, where sexuality, fashion and self-presentation meld with ideas of struggle and hope. As the artist says: ‘That’s what hip-hop is’.

Alvaro Barrington
Tupac Bather, Oct 2023, 2023
Enamel, Flashe and pencil on concrete in gilded aluminium and carved wood frame
91 x 91 x 7 cm (35.43 x 35.43 x 5.91 in)

Reflecting the memories and influences that meet in the exhibition, Barrington’s most recent works introduce new media to his established material language, bringing together elements that evoke luxury, like intricately carved wood, patterned leather given to him by the acclaimed luxury brand Alaïa and Tiffany-inspired stained glass lights, with laundry bags, milk bottles, concrete, metal, cardboard and yarn: non-traditional objects and materials that reference his personal and cultural history.

Alvaro Barrington

Mary J., Share my World, Oct 2023, 2023

Enamel, Flashe and pencil on concrete in polished aluminium and enamel painted carved wood frame

91 x 91 x 7 cm (35.43 x 35.43 x 5.91 in)

Like in the memorable opening scene of the 1961 Blake Edwards-directed film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly looks longingly at the Tiffany’s window displays as the sun rises on 5th Avenue, Barrington encourages visitors to the exhibition to experience this sense of anticipation and aspiration for themselves as they look at his new works.

Alvaro Barrington
Breakfast in Tiffany's, Olympia, Oct 2023, 2023
Acrylic, oil, enamel, Flashe, pencil on concrete, stained glass frame, lamp
40 x 60 x 20 cm (15.75 x 23.62 x 7.87 in)

Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Don’t you ever get that feeling? [...] When I get it, the only thing that does any good is to jump into a cab and go to Tiffany’s. [...] Nothing very bad could happen to you there. — Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961

Music, especially hip hop, is a fundamental source of inspiration for Barrington. This work references the lyrics of the song ‘Sky’s The Limit’ (1997) by the American rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (also known as Biggie). The musician is depicted mid-performance in pencil and enamel on a small block of concrete mounted to a larger surface of painted cardboard beneath.

Alvaro Barrington

Sky's the Limit, Oct 2023, 2023

Pencil, Flashe, enamel on 2 concrete slabs, fabrics, acrylic, concrete and baby powder on cardboard in engraved mirrors and walnut frame

199 x 199 x 20 cm (78.35 x 78.35 x 7.87 in)

You would wait in front of the stores to get that Britney Spears or that NSYNC or that Tupac album. And it was this longing for it, because in a way it sold you some idea of your reality, or who you could potentially become. It’s important to have this window, it formed this emotional sense of like there’s something between you and this thing that you’re longing for, this aspirational idea. — Alvaro Barrington

The CHAINGING Room relates to the artist’s memories of being a teenager in New York City, standing in front of closed shop shutters at dawn waiting eagerly for them to open so he could change his clothes to reflect how he wished to present himself to the world that day. In Barrington’s words: ‘If there was nights I didn’t have a place to go, I would wake up on the train, go to SoHo and wait until the store opens, then I know I could dress and become myself, so it’s like a baptism. I always knew that I wanted to make paintings that held this moment together. This is The Baptism of Christ, so it’s my version of Piero.’

Each of the closed metal shutters represents one of the figures in Piero della Francesca’s mid-15th century The Baptism of Christ: the two shutters that stand alone are Jesus Christ and John the Baptist, while the three shutters grouped together represent the three saints or angels. The shutters are also landscape paintings, Barrington explains: he relates them to the tradition of American landscape painting and particularly to Mark Rothko, with the horizontal rectangular forms created by the slats of Barrington’s shutters recalling the horizontal areas of paint in Rothko’s colour field paintings.

Alvaro Barrington
The Storefront, John, Oct 2023, 2023
Steel
170 x 170 x 29.3 cm (66.93 x 66.93 x 11.54 in)

Piero della Francesca
The Baptism of Christ, 1448—1450
Tempera on panel
167 cm × 116 cm (66 in × 46 in)
National Gallery, London

Mark Rothko
No. 3/No. 13, 1949
Oil on canvas
216.5 cm × 164.8 cm (85.2 in × 64.9 in)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

There’s a lot of art historical themes because I think one of the things that I think through the show is that oftentimes we think we’re so different from our ancestors. And to me, the story of Jesus is the same as a Tupac lyric. — Alvaro Barrington

Aspiration and possibility, especially among Black and marginalised communities, has always been at the heart of Barrington’s practice. Through recreating his own experiences of gazing into shop windows in New York City before school, the artist encourages visitors to the exhibition to look at his works with the same sense of longing and wonder he once felt. In doing so, the artist relays a narrative about not having and wanting, but also about the power of the objects we desire and consume to give us a sense of security, hope, or, as Barrington says, ‘participation’.

Special thanks to Alaïa for providing the leather used in selected works.

Samuel Begis @samuelbegis www.samuelbegis.com
David Stoeger   www.work-untitled.com
Jan Eugster www.janeugster.com
Scot Sherrard @courtyardlondon www.courtyardlondon
Sam Chapman @se1pictureframeslondon www.se1pictureframes.co.uk
Lee Smith @leesmithwoodcarving   www.benharms.co.uk
Carlo Puccini   www.carlopuccini.it
Lorenzo Nencioni   lorenzonencioni.wixsite.com/intagliofirenze
Peter Scherpenzeel   https://tiffanylampstudio.com
France Vitrail   france-vitrail.fr
Mica Hendricks @micahendricks
Andrew Moore   www.andrewmoor.com @andrewmooreassociates
Anthony Guerree @anthony-guerree   www.anthony-guerree.com

ACB Studio

Lily Woodhouse @lily.woodhouse
Molly Balmer @mollollipop
Halina Edwards @halinaedwards
Ovaanah Dawkins
Maddie Banwell @maddiebanwell
Will Kippax @willkippax
Jesse Beagley @jb_craft
Hazel Brill @hazel_brill
Ashley Lee-Hunter @inside___in
Lis Tomlinson @lis_tomlinson
Natalia Grabowska
Dorus Tossijn @dorustossijn

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Pick up a free A3 poster featuring one of Alvaro Barrington's works when you visit the exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Pantin, on view until 27 January 2024.