Alexis Petroff presents work from three distinct but interrelated groupings: gouache paintings and newsprint collages are on view beside two series of photographs of salvage trucks and shopping carts. The photographs were taken on the streets of Chicago over a period of six years.

Alexis was born in Bordeaux, France in 1955. At the age of seven he moved to Paris. Five years later his family relocated to New York City where they joined an uncle who was attending art school. Alexis describes the experience of immigration to the U.S. as “…being deposited onto another planet by a spaceship - a total mind fuck.” Based on these early experiences, identity - from the vantage point of the immigrant, becomes an important subject.

Alexis Petroff has maintained a strong connection to the art of the 1950s and 1960s, which he first saw with his uncle. Alexis favors mass culture as a source for his imagery. His paintings are composed of multiple gestures that imitate the flat effect of silk-screening - a technique he exploited in the late 1970s while a student at James Madison University in Virginia. At first sight, the paintings appear to be primarily explorations of formal relationships featuring light-hued color fields overlaid with idiosyncratic squiggles. Some works include representational elements culled from photographs found on the Internet, or appropriated from newsprint, coloring books and connect-the-dot drawings. These sources are scanned and digitally manipulated to produce working studies. They are then translated into hand drawings with felt tip markers on small sheets of vellum and layered to create working studies for the paintings.

While his subject matter is veiled in abstraction and the language of formalism, Alexis’ interests range from global and ecological concerns, to ontological questions. He considers “…the speed of the universe versus the slowness of life.” He depicts the search for identity through allegorical representations. A peculiar shorthand of innocuously rendered birds and animals is mingled with stylized images of cityscapes, machines and symbols.

The newsprint collages are manically assembled out of tiny fragments of print and strategically cropped to obscure his sources. The pieces are gathered on the sticky side of clear rolls of tape. They become microfiche-like repositories - grounds for future drawings and paintings. They are also a convenient format for artist books. This is a favored medium consistent with Alexis’ interest in keeping things small-scale, simple and egalitarian. It also pays homage to one of his favorite artists: Dieter Roth.

Alexis forages in the apparent meaninglessness of the everyday and the debris of consumer culture - a gesture he shares with the implied protagonists in his shopping cart and salvage truck photo series. He began photographing the carts and trucks during his daily bicycle commute with the idea of making a book. Alexis is adamant about wanting to steer clear of socio-political representations of marginal, poor and disenfranchised people. He says of the series, “I just want to show the material culture. I want the work to be more open-ended.”

The debris on the back of the trucks is piled high. When viewed from the side, the chaos appears organized. The often-improvised fences built on the sides of the truck beds optimize their hauling capacity. The fence designs run the gamut -some are crudely fashioned out of lumber and others are neatly welded out of steel. Function precedes aesthetics, but many owners take pains to paint the frames with matching or complimentary colors. By opting to document the myriad ways in which this alternative economy configures itself, Alexis calls attention to the excesses of material culture. He celebrates the ingenuity and resourcefulness of each worker.

Alexis values humor, playfulness, intuition and, above all, beauty as important qualities in art making. These are not simply image-making devices, but genuine life-coping strategies. They have helped him adapt to a new culture and navigate an increasingly chaotic and dehumanized environment. With small and thoughtful gestures, Alexis invites us to find redemption (with a lower case) in the glut of consumer culture and the minutiae of the everyday.

Georgina Valverde 2005