KIPNZ is pleased to present Memoria de un Cocodrilo (“memory of a crocodile”), sculptural artworks by Alejandro Mazón.

In Mazón’s work, memories and the memories of others blur and become indistinguishable. Incorporating found photographs and ephemera from decades past, his paintings and three-dimensional works weave magical realism, baroque romance and pop references into a darkly funny and surprising theater. 

Mazón considers himself primarily as a painter. Throughout his career, however, he has turned to making multimedia “memory boxes” as a way to play and experiment with nascent ideas. 

I can paint for hours, weeks, and months. I can produce a new body of work every 6 months, maintaining the focus and the intensity that is required to produce the best possible paintings I can master… and yet, I often need a break from creating one-dimensional art.  I need something totally different to break the threat of stagnation after months glued to my easel. 

It is at these times when I inevitably turn to making what I often call “memory boxes.” These mixed media works are intended as an exercise to free my mind from the confines of a flat surface. Originally, they were never meant to be shown. I looked at them as a way to loosen up for the next series of paintings. It was not long before the walls in my studio began to fill with these constructions, and finally I decided to show them.

Each construction is like one of my paintings: they tell a story, they make use of someone else’s memories to create a stage where a play seems to be unfolding.  

Alejandro Mazón was born in 1962 in Havana, Cuba and relocated to Spain shortly thereafter. At twelve years old, Alejandro moved with his family to New York. He studied under the Cuban master Juan Gonzalez at the School of Visual Arts and later became involved with the burgeoning underground arts scene, forming brief friendships with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and others. While these artists had little stylistic influence in Alejandro’s work, they solidified his philosophy of painting to this day.

He now works between his studios in the Bronx and Walton, New York.