TEMPE, ARIZONA.- The exhibition Landscape in the Fireplace: Paintings by Pedro Alvarez is now on view at Arizona State University Art Museum , Nelson Fine Arts Center, through June 19, 2004. Pedro Alvarez combines old and new painting styles and ideological positions. He quotes 19th century costumbrista painting by Europeans who came to Cuba and created the vocabulary of Romantic clichés that characterized the island as exotic and sensuous, and overlays these images with American advertising illustration from the mid-50s. His content reflects layering of global influences that converge, underlining the disparities between the source and the recipient of transmitted culture. Alvarez combines references to Cuban, African and American culture. American monuments and heroes of its Revolution attest to principles of democracy and equality ensconced in the American social contract. Jolting the temporal sense are the famed fotingos, American cars in Cuba at the time of the 1959 Cuban Revolution that have been gradually tropicalized by Cuban invented parts. In the lush Cuban landscape, black slaves gaze on, puzzled by the juxtapositions. Over all is a monochrome green of American money, the currency of exchange on an island that officially despises capitalism.

Pedro Alvarez is of the generation of Cuban artists who emerged in the 1990s who gained international recognition for their fresh approach to art-making in a political context in which free speech was not to be taken for granted. The use of irony and oblique references created the space for expression. Alvarez spends his time between his native Havana and Malaga, Spain. His work has been shown in the Istanbul Biennial, the Havana Biennial, and was featured in the exhibition organized by the ASU Art Museum Contemporary Art from Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island which toured nationally.