Patrick Alston, Coco Cherry Mango, 2023, Acrylic, gouache enamel, oil, pumice and textured spray on sewn fabric, 127 × 127 cm, 50 × 50 in
Patrick Alston is an American painter whose practice focuses on gesture and materiality. Through abstraction, Patrick Alston‘s work reflects upon socio-politics, identity, language, and the psychology of color. His re-contextualized subjects, rich and complex compositions, are expressed through gestural mark-making and the combining of various materials and techniques.
Patrick Alston employs a variety of materials in his process which includes oil, acrylic and spray paint, resin, fabric, and plastic on canvas. This approach, often presented in the form of grids and squares, forms an intersection of various layers with different textures. Furthermore, Alston is interested in drawing on the relationship between image and language. The selection of titles for each work plays a crucial role in his process. Through this, he compares the abstraction of painting to the abstraction of language found in Black English Vernacular. Between aesthetics, materiality, and language, he explores the different forms of communicating, understanding, and perceiving. Alston’s visual language relates to New York graffiti by generating a medium to project the unwritten aesthetic of the deconstructed landscape.
"Painting, specifically abstraction, can express emotions and feelings inexpressible by words or iconography. It is a language unto itself. A way in which I can express aspects of myself only understood by my core inner being."
– Patrick Alston
Patrick Alston (b. in 1991 in New York, NY, US) grew up in the South Bronx of New York. Alston attended Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN, US, studying Art and Psychology. Patrick Alston had various solo and group exhibitions throughout the US, and debuted with Bode Projects in various shows in Berlin, DE. He recently held a solo show in London, UK. Patrick Alston lives and works in NY, New York, US.