Edgar Ramirez

Chris Sharp Gallery is pleased to present Edgar Ramirez’s new series, ‘Alameda Stones’ at Post-Fair.

These new, small-scale works can be seen as the culmination of the past five years of Ramirez’s work. It’s as if he has distilled everything from subject matter to formal methodology down its essence. Compact, richly layered palimpsests of the urban landscape, these works see Ramirez at his most succinct and precise.

Of this new body of work, Ramirez writes:

Driving along Alameda St, I move through a corridor marked by trains, trucks, containers, and auto body shops. There’s constant traffic, labor and repetition, yet like most industrial areas, the space feels strangely barren. Color is everywhere, but muted by soot and grime. Time and the elements have worn surfaces down.

The abundance of auto body shops is striking. Each announces itself through bold color and direct language that also function as markers for what happens there. These moments of color sit against containers and vehicles equally marked by use and movement. The landscape repeats itself daily. People working. People repairing. People passing through. Much of it goes unnoticed while moving from one place to the other.

I stop, photograph, and paint, drawing from these surfaces and markers. Each painting in Alameda Stones carries the same language, where some elements move forward while others recede. Some are quiet; others are more direct and insistent. Decisions shift from one work to the next, allowing each painting to hold its own balance of energy, restraint, and play.

These works ask for closeness where nuance, blemish, color, and accumulated layers become visible. The longer you’re in front of them, the more they shift. The Stones are fragments from a larger body. Pieces of pieces. Small markers that carry the presence of something beyond themselves.