Road to Utopia Exhibit: Aleph Contemporary, London

Road to Utopia: Studio - Carnival - Paradise, This exhibition is curated by Rosa JH Berland and exhibition features recent work by three contemporary artists: Alex McAdoo (United States), Lee Johnson (United Kingdom), and Jaime Valtierra (United Kingdom/Spain). For these artists, art is a means for re-negotiating identity, and a tool for socio-political criticism. It is also a source for the paradisal — a space invented entirely from the subjective artistic process, “a new church” as Expressionist artist Max Beckmann once said. Nevertheless, this is not a place of a singular sorrow, denomination, or ideal, but rather a series of often deeply private and lushly resplendent worlds populated by troubled protagonists, esoteric symbols, and a reconfiguration of identity and storytelling. 

 

Drawing upon life experiences both profound and ordinary, the artists refer formally to historic masterworks and canonical modernist movements such as Expressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, synthesizing these strands of influence to create contemporary imagery. Within this complex approach, McAdoo, Johnson, and Valtierra transform imagination into new spaces.