Alex Becerra

In a visual reflection on his travels to the Yucatan Peninsula, Alex Becerra’s PSYCHOMANIA presents a fantastical landscape which explores the complexities and curiosities of the human condition. Across three large-scale canvases, a terrain inspired by the artist’s emotional experience encountering the vibrant scenery, heritage, and folklore of the Yucatan, invites the viewer through a vivid portal of contrasting pigments and rich textures. 

Across his body of work, Becerra’s maximalist approach engages an improvisational dialogue between the artist and his materials. Whether using a brush, his fingers, a palette knife, or the last drops squeezed from a tube of paint, Becerra spontaneously fills every inch of his canvases. Within Chiccharon ( Happy Pretty ), the painted scene brims with the dense greenery of an untamed jungle. A tangle of striking reds and oranges cuts through the overlapping layers of lush greens, blues, and yellows in bursts of unexpected intensity, drawing the viewer into a mesmerizing scene ripe with harmony and unpredictability. The combination of both abstract and representational elements suggests a controlled chaos, granting points of entry, pockets of respite and clarity for the eye and the mind. 

The spontaneous brush strokes and vibrant colors of Becerra’s canvases reflect the artist’s aesthetic investigations into the ecstasy and catharsis of creation, as an experience of both raw freedom and extreme vulnerability. In the painting Bathers, Becerra references art historical depictions of the natural world as a setting for soothing, cleansing, and rejuvenation. Amidst hues of deep purple and bright orange, the outlines of four female figures stand out above the canvas in neon green, allowing the backdrop of the jungle to seep through, their forms are entwined in a mess of leaves, absorbed into the pulse of their surroundings. Inspired by the folklore of the Yucatan, the painting evokes a spiritual engagement with the land, channeling both the tranquility of the jungle and the internal conflicts it stirs.

Throughout the gallery space, the jungle of PSYCHOMANIA serves to mirror the emotional landscape of creation, a realm of entangled joy and frustration, curiosity and anxiety, so deeply intertwined as to become barely discernible from one another. Through an aesthetic exploration of both his internal environment and his travel experiences, Alex Becerra beckons the viewer to uncover the stories embedded within each painted gesture, daring us to lose ourselves within a labyrinth of unexplored consciousness.