CARL D'ALVIA position contradictoire [Contradictory Position]

How did the New York scene influence your practice? When I first moved to New York in the late 1980s one of the first shows I saw was of Richard Artschwager’s wooden crates. Somewhere on West Broadway— maybe Leo Castelli. Around that time there was a Neo-Geo movement in New York. Painters like Peter Halley and Harvey Quaytman— so maybe that informed my development as well. Most of your work operates at the crossroad of figurative and abstract art. Yes, the more I go on the more I like to exist between things—or in a contradictory position. I have

an idea that everyone is born either figurative or abstract. However, you can often get more interesting results by going toward your opposite polarity.

I began as a Figurative Sculptor doing a lot of clay modeling from life and studying the hits of European Figuration. But I noticed that when the work moved towards abstraction, initially by incorporating geometric elements, it became more intriguing. I like the titles to not be too specific, so yes to allow various states of mind when approaching the work.