Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.)
Cosmic Currents: Lita Albuquerque & Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A.)
GAVLAK West Palm Beach
December 4 – January 4, 2024
GAVLAK West Palm Beach is pleased to present Cosmic Currents, a two-person exhibition uniting the works of multidisciplinary artists Lita Albuquerque and José Alvarez (D.O.P.A.). Known for their distinct yet complementary practices, both artists use light, materiality, and metaphysical themes to explore spirituality, cosmology, and the nature of existence. This exhibition marks their first collaboration, offering a dialogue between Albuquerque’s ethereal explorations of the infinite and Alvarez’s immersive, hallucinatory collages.
Albuquerque is celebrated for her large-scale ephemeral installations in natural landscapes and her deeply resonant pigment paintings, which often employ vivid tones and reflective materials to examine humanity’s connection to the cosmos. For this exhibition, she debuts a new gestural painting, Propelling Us Upwards, She, The Earth, Throwing Us In The Air While We Fly, Never Falling, A Poem For Ana Mendieta (2024). Featuring upward brushstrokes against an electric blue background, the work pays homage to the silhouetted forms in Ana Mendieta’s art. Complementing this new piece are three of Albuquerque’s acclaimed Auric Field paintings, rendered in blue and silver tones, where refracted light evokes the interplay between celestial and earthly realms. Together, these works create a poetic meditation on light, movement, and the profound connections between humanity and the universe.
Alvarez (D.O.P.A.) is renowned for his vibrant mixed-media works, performances, and installations that fuse shamanic traditions with contemporary art. His kaleidoscopic mica-based collages—featuring psychedelic colors, floral motifs, and materials like crystals and porcupine quills—explore belief systems and the intersections of perception, reality, and the metaphysical. On view are four of his renowned “Solar Flare” tondos crafted from mineral crystals, mica, and paint. These works, alongside a selection of luminous watercolors and collages, reflect Alvarez’s ability to merge the spiritual, the scientific, and the cosmic into transformative visual experiences.
Both artists employ light and reflection as central elements in their practices, translating abstract visual languages into meditations on existence. Albuquerque’s shimmering pigments and reflective surfaces interact poetically with Alvarez’s mica-based compositions, where refracted light creates dynamic interplay between color and form. Through these materials, both artists invite viewers to engage with the immaterial—light as both medium and metaphor.
In their approaches to the mystical and metaphysical, Albuquerque and Alvarez share a fascination with the transcendental. Albuquerque’s cosmic mappings resonate with Alvarez’s explorations of shamanic spirituality, each offering unique yet complementary perspectives on humanity’s search for meaning. While Albuquerque grounds her inquiries in celestial alignments and earthly landscapes, Alvarez’s works conjure portals to other dimensions, blending the sacred and the hallucinatory. Together, their practices evoke a sense of wonder, bridging the scientific and the spiritual.