Totems for a Flattened Now, an exhibition of photographs by Bay area-based artist Nando Alvarez-Perez, was chosen by Photo District News, a publication for photo professionals as a feature exhibition in their "Photo of the Day" section.
Instagram “is probably my biggest influence, or at least what’s going into my eyes the most on a daily basis,” Nando Alvarez-Perez recently told an interviewer. The effected is visible in his exuberant strain of still life, which uses an everything-all-at-once esthetic to mash together cultural references from art history, pop culture and digital technology. His series “Totems for a Flattened Now,” on view until March 5 at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, features bits of classical sculpture pictured in the studio or found in incongruous spots, and makes a comparison between the enduring nature of these iconic stones and the digital world’s brief half-life. The photos, Alvarez-Perez writes in a statement, “explore the ways by which images, myths and symbols are recycled, transformed, and re-represented according to our culture’s ever changing needs and desires.” In one photo, Venus on the Half Shell poses in front of a pet store goldfish tank, as if emerging from its waters; in another, a photo of Venus de Milo is set among fake
