Alvaro Barrington: 92-01 'In Livin Color' | Emalin
It was far too hot in London to see anything this week. So instead, a short anecdote from a show I saw recently.
Stuart Shave’s old space on Helmet Row has been taken over by Emalin, and the outside of the gallery is papered with 90s R&B and rap covers. Inside, in Alvaro Barrington’s new exhibition, among the big burlap wall works (that sell for over $200,000 a pop these days), the clear PVC replicas of luxury handbags, and the plastic mannequins wearing Timberlands, are CD players, blasting out music.
The gallerist on the front desk must have been in her 20s. We talked to her about the show. She mentioned the four gallery rooms were themed around the four seasons. She mentioned the artist - Venezuela-born and working in London - was going up in the world. I knew that already, having wandered around even splashier installations of his at Ropac in Pantin a couple of years back, and Tate Britain in 2025.
Then she mentioned the CD players: chunky black plastic hulks of a kind I owned as a child in the actual 1990s. None of us knew how they worked, she said. So we had a training session on them.
One person’s nostalgia is another person’s ancient history.
Alvaro Barrington: 92-01 ‘In Livin Color’ is at Emalin (London). [dates needed]