I’m driving down a commercial block in Alhambra, California, the kind of street where you won’t find a Starbucks, or a Yoshinoya, but a Salvation Army and a ballet school, looking for Michael Alvarez’s temporary studio where he is painted the bulk of the work for his solo show with Jeffrey Deitch in New York called I See You. I love this part of the art world that I feel privileged to see and not many get to experience. A major solo show in a Soho gallery in the art capital of the world is being painted in an old storefront on the eastside of Downtown Los Angeles. There is a magic in that; art comes from places you might not expect. You are taking your kid to a dance class and an artist is painting their masterpieces next door.
When I met Michael in mid-October, some of the paintings were still waiting on a final figure; one was waiting on an orange sky. We talked about the show, but mostly about everything that led to it: growing up on the east side of LA, graffiti and skateboarding, the teachers who opened doors, the friends and family who fill his canvases, and the particular haze, a yellowed, smoggy murk, that makes his Los Angeles look nothing like the bright city everyone else paints. I don’t know why, but I think of the gloss and chrome of Mario Ayala, the deep blue skies of Alfonso Gonzalez Jr., or even the surreal richness of David Hockney’s LA. Alvarez paints something between a memory and a reality. And there is beauty there.
Michael made this temporary space feel like a permanent home. There is ephemera everywhere; on the walls, on the floor, on his desk. There’s a CD player in the corner, which draws my attention and immediately starts our conversation on the subject of Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron is one of Michael’s heroes (“top to bottom, I’m a fan,” he told me), and Pieces of a Man is never far from the CD player .It got me thinking that there’s always a moment in a great Gil Scott-Heron song when the poetry starts moving, the band locks into its roll, and the whole thing turns into a landscape painting made of sound. You aren’t just listening anymore. You’re watching a scene go by, like a moving picture. I thought about that a lot after visiting Michael Alvarez at his studio.
The largest painting in the show takes its title from that album: “I Think I’ll Call It Morning (The Road to Peace).” It shows the river trail Michael sometimes rides his bike along on the way to the studio: brown water, debris everywhere, and, as he puts it, “still a little waterfall.” It’s his break from the bullshit. Like the music, it’s a storyteller’s view of a city that keeps going by.
Evan Pricco: As an outsider looking in, I find LA such a fascinating place to paint. The city changes all the time. It seems like an endless subject.
Michael Alvarez: Honestly, I think it’s happenstance. This is where I live and where I grew up, so it’s exactly what I know. I’ve lived in different pockets of LA, but never anywhere else. This is all reality for me. If I ever moved, it’d be interesting to see whether I’d go back to memories I’m still holding, experiences that are still stuck in me, or apply the same habits to a new place. And since I collect debris and artifacts for the work, that would change too. If I moved to Japan, I’m not going to find debris like I find here.
EP: Are the paintings in this show all based on memories?
MA: Either memories or artifacts I collected that are part of a memory or an experience. Everything in this show is somewhere I’ve been, or somewhere I have some investment in, or where I’ve shed blood. It’s all personal.
Take the DIY skate spot. My friends built it. I wasn’t part of the build, but I was invited to skate it when it was pretty top secret. People were keeping it quiet so it could have some kind of lifespan and not get demolished after all the time and energy that went into it. I was labeled trustworthy enough to go enjoy it.
The spot’s gone now. So that painting was a collaboration. I asked my friends, “Is it cool if I make something in honor of this?” Thankfully they approved and started sharing ideas and documentation. I’d been there maybe ten times, max, whereas they put in blood and sweat and tears. Some of them are pro skaters, so there were video projects filmed there. Just being able to be there was an honor, and that’s something I take seriously.
EP: How do you know when to paint a memory? When does something feel special enough?
MA: Sometimes it’s lightning striking. You’re there in the moment and it’s like, “Holy shit, this is it.” Other times it’s revisiting an experience over and over as time passes. Since around 2007, 2008, I’ve tried to have the intention of painting from life. Everything comes from memories, documentation, archives, stories, secondhand or thirdhand stories, something I’m connected to. And because the city is constantly changing, there’s always a supply of ideas. When the blocks hit, I love the feeling of just opening the door and experiencing whatever’s out there. A moment can strike, and suddenly I want to make something.
EP: You use photo reference. Does a painting drift from the photo as you work?
MA: It does, for sure. Everything here has some level of photo reference. But the family party painting, for example, is one picture, one experience, and I’m using an amalgamation of different things that happened at that party to add nuance. A snapshot captures one moment, but so much is happening before it, after it, and around it.
EP: And the big river trail landscape?
MA: That’s I Think I’ll Call It Morning (The Road to Peace). Gil Scott-Heron references. I love Pieces of a Man. That’s the river trail I ride my bike on to get to the studio. That’s the nature I’m experiencing, my break from bullshit. Obviously it’s man-made. It’s brown water with all kinds of debris. But it’s still nature. There’s still a little waterfall.
EP: I’ve always wanted to ask you this. So many people paint LA bright and light. Think about David Hockney’s LA. But your work has this haze over it, a color that’s not typical of your peers. How did that develop?
MA: It’s a few things. One, spray paint lends itself to haze by default. I use it in almost everything, even the smaller works, and just by how it’s applied, depending on what colors start mixing, haze gets created.
Then there’s the intention of memory. The same thing happens with the figures. Some things are concrete, some are opaque. I like to give the illusion that a figure is in motion, or dissipating, as if it’s an impression of someone who was there last week, or earlier in the day.
And in terms of color, what I’ve experienced, what I know, is smog. You know what I’m saying? In the morning especially. There’s something vaporous about how the sky feels to me. Especially when it’s filtered through smog or chemicals, something compromised. That can make things really beautiful sometimes, like we’ve seen with the fires. But at the very least, that’s what I see.
EP: On the way over, I was thinking your filter almost feels like a vision of LA’s future. The famous light the film industry was built on: what happens when that industry leaves? Does LA dim when the fantasy is gone?
MA: It’s funny you say that, because this is what it feels like to me now. It’s what it’s always felt like. It’s not like I’ve never been near anything glamorous. I’ve been to the Chinese Theatre, I’ve gone to Amoeba. But even in Hollywood, there are buses and congestion and cars everywhere.
EP: It’s a grind.
MA: It is a grind. So that’s what I’m putting down. Sometimes I’ll punch things up in the process because it feels right. I also play with atmosphere. I was fortunate to learn traditional compositional techniques at Art Center, so I think in layers of foreground, middle ground, and background, where things soften or dissipate. But for sure, I’m thinking about that layer of smog, that compromise.
EP: Your last solo show in New York was at Marlborough in 2018. What’s the difference between that Michael and this one?
MA: At that point I hadn’t had any real commercial success. Marlborough found out about me maybe three months before they offered the show, which was very abrupt. I was like, “Holy shit, they noticed me. I don’t want to fuck this up.” I was working full time. I had some work on deck, but I needed to make more.
Before that, I’d had a couple of shows that were commercially unsuccessful, and I was already discouraged. I’d gotten certain feedback too. I’m down for feedback, but sometimes you think, “I appreciate you saying that, but I know that’s not where I’m going with this.” I already felt connected to a certain lineage of artists, and I knew other pathways existed. Even if they didn’t, I was committed to what I was exploring.
After that, the Riverside Art Museum showed the work when it came back from New York, but not much happened commercially. I did pop-ups with friends, backyard shows, and my buddy Thomas Diaz and I did one at a DIY skate spot. Doing things for ourselves was invigorating. Meanwhile, a lot of my friends, elders and younger artists, were starting to have success, so I was learning from everybody. I was also seeing that certain spaces were starting to make room for different artists and different voices.
EP: When did things shift?
MA: The year before Marlborough, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture acquired some works. That was the mind-blower out of all those years. Then there was a long gap. About four years ago, I made the decision to quit my jobs and focus on painting. I’d worked in art education for about fourteen years. Around my solo show at Matthew Brown in 2022, I was working for two nonprofit art organizations and doing commissions on top of that. Three hustles. I felt like a proper adult.
Thank you to Vincent Valdez, who advocated for that opportunity. With the platform that gallery has, it gave me visibility, where before, opportunities came and went with nothing afterward.
So the difference between 2018 and 2026 is all lessons. I’m still learning, so I almost feel new. Maybe a little more weathered. Back then I knew nothing. When I hung out with friends who had that kind of success, I’d just be ear-hustling, soaking it up, so if my time came, I’d understand. I’ve also had years to do therapy, to make sure I’m ready internally for whatever may or may not come, and that I can stand by what’s in progress. Because sometimes it takes a while for what’s in progress to even feel like it’s in progress.
EP: Do you feel like you have to represent Los Angeles in New York?
MA: I’m going to be wearing my hat, wearing my jacket, repping. [Laughs] No, I think the work does that. That’s why the work is what it is. And it seems like there’s less of a Knicks-Lakers thing now, more visibility and acceptance for contemporary Angeleno and Chicano artists.
EP: What was the last show or album that made you want to go straight to the studio?
MA: Can I tell you about a show I’m bummed I slept on? Willie Birch at the California African American Museum. I was a day late and a dollar short. From the storytelling to the installations to the sculpture, he has such an open process. There’s representational work, but also found objects, something that isn’t outsider or folksy. Have you heard the term rasquache? It’s used mostly in a Chicano art context. It’s making do with what you have. That’s how you build your house, that’s how you fix something. There are examples of it in a few of these paintings.
EP: That’s not only art. That’s life.
MA: Exactly. It’s a term from life that gets applied to art, because some of us know that life, and we bring it into our practice because it’s what we know.
EP: I’m so hyped that you have a CD player in here.
MA: And a cassette player. Lately it’s been Swamp Dogg’s Total Destruction to Your Mind, Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces of a Man, Bobbi Humphrey’s Blacks and Blues, George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, Donald Byrd’s Stepping into Tomorrow, Fishmans, and The Band’s Music from Big Pink. I’ve had a few of those where it’s like, “Okay, this is the morning ritual.” Fits the title of the show…
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