Alvaro Barrington

In ARTISTS I STEAL FROM the 36 year old artist Alvaro Barrington and Julia Peyton-Jones, the very well appreciated contemporary art curator, bring together works by 49 artists who influence Alvaro's work. The exhibition is at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in London from 5th June to 9th August 2019.

Alvaro, you are from Venezuela?

My parents met there, and after my mom got pregnant the family moved to New York. I moved to Grenada to live with my grandma, to have a real childhood. My parents separated and my mom remarried. When I was 8 I went to Brooklyn to be with her, but she passed away when I was 10.

What kind of a child were you?

I was a lot of different things, but after my mom died I became a very quiet kid who would draw a lot. That was the thing everybody around me celebrated. I always drew, and eventually I realized there's a world out there that supports people who make things.

When did you decide that art would be your career?

It was after I went to Hunter College on Lexington Avenue, which has a great art program with a lot of visiting artists. Carroll Dunham the painter said, "If you hate an artist you should understand why, and if you love an artist you should understand why. And you should go look at every show at every gallery." I started by making bad versions of paintings by the people I love, like Anselm Kiefer and Francis Bacon. They're all in the garbage

Why?

Because painting is a language, and you can't just land in Germany and expect to know the language. You learn the language by studying people who are great at it and understanding what the language is.

When did you do work you thought was good?

It was the last painting I made as an undergrad. I thought: OK, I've digested so many things. Let me try to throw it into a painting and see what I get. I made a painting of this guy who had a hairy arm. I squeezed tubes of paint and it began to slide down the canvas in this really gross way, and at that moment I realized the possibility within paint, that it was mobile and had life and fluidity. But that was after ten years of copying people and writing notes about what they were doing.

"For me, art school really happens in museums and galleries."

In London you have co-curated this exhibition called Artists I Steal From?

Yes. 49 artists, such as Etel Adnan, Joseph Beuys, Louise Fishman, Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Chris Martin, Elizabeth Peyton, Robert Rauschenberg, Trevor Shimizu, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol and Purvis Young. Some of them are very well known and some less so, all are treated in the show as being at the same level. It could have been 600, there are so many great artists. For me, art school really happens in museums and galleries.

How would you describe this exhibition?

It's the education I wish I had. Art schools should say: Let's go down to the Met and look at this painting. Let's spend half of the week just looking at Paolo Uccello or Louise Fishman or Etel Adnan or Jean-Michel Basquiat or Anselm Kiefer. What are they doing? Why is that a successful painting? Why are they here? Why are they in front of me? Is it just some random scheme, or are they actually doing something brilliant?

Your own work in the show is called Unc You the Plug and is made of canvas and rags and yarn. How come?

It's a portrait of my experience over the past two years. There's an orange plug and a cord in there that I got from when I was down in Florida at Robert Rauschenberg's house.

Do you find a common thread between artists like Kiefer and Rauschenberg and Basquiat?

I take from all of them. In that one painting is everyone from Aaron Douglas to Jacob Lawrence to Rashid Johnson. There are some images of Grenada. Matisse is in there. Ultimately it's a composition.

Why have you stitched together rags and canvas?

Chris Ofili used elephant dung in his painting as a way to throw himself off, as a way to resolve the question: How do I put elephant dung in the painting that makes you look at it and not think, Oh that's elephant dung? I need to throw something in the painting that I have to resolve, and I remember my auntie sewing, and so I thought I could use sewing as a way to throw me off, as a way to resolve the fact that I didn't know how to make an interesting portrait.

Will Alvaro Barrington be remembered for sewing and yarn?

I hope that history never remembers me as using yarn! You learn that artists did this one thing, but when you see their long history you go: How come they didn't tell me about this? That's a huge disservice that we do to artists. Picasso was smart in that he was able to figure out how to change, but most artists were very diverse.

"I need to throw something in the painting that I have to resolve."