“Caribe Arch Series” by Alexander Phoenyx

 

Daylight – acrylic and oil on canvas board, 10″ x 8″, 2020.

 

Window 1 – acrylic and oil on canvas paper, 20″ x 16″, 2020.

 

 

Front Door – acrylic, oil and spray paint on canvas paper, 12″ x 9″, 2020.

 

Artist’s Statement:

Life has a way of hiding beauty in the decaying; a story hidden in the elements which abstraction builds from foundation to peak. In the morning light, one building might appear innocent, at noon it becomes a proud society prima bella, at sunset the light disappears, and the building’s colour fades and another kind of clarity might emerge. A daily cycle. History.

As a photographer, I would often roam the country taking photos of old houses and buildings. When I look at them, I see elements of line and form and the way the light plays on perspective. As I keep looking, I imagine the stories of the families that built these structures and inhabited them. Families that had homes, precariously pivoted. As life goes on, losses emerge.

“As an architect, you design for the present with an awareness of the past for a future which is essentially unknown,” Norman Foster once said. This series is about architecture in the truest sense: as social construction. These paintings seek to engrave and preserve technical aspects of our lived landscape, as much as they gesture towards the turbulence and triumphs of our social interactions.

 

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Stefan Rampersad is a Trinidadian-born visual artist, self-taught graphic designer, and photographer. His work is catalogued under the pseudonym of Alexander Phoenyx. He is a member of the Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago, has been featured in group shows, and has collaborated with fashion designer Nwannia on raising awareness about sexual abuse. His art can be found at his online gallery, canvas.phnyx.pro.

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