Opening Reception, “When I Wanted Everything,” Alex Sewell Exhibition at TOTAH Gallery

TOTAH celebrates the opening of  “When I Wanted Everything,” an exhibition of new works by Alex Sewell, with a reception on October 24th from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm. The exhibition is on view through December 18th.

The images populating Alex Sewell’s paintings archive an ongoing dialectic between the artist’s personal memory and the collective identity of the American psyche. A restive sense of melancholy threads through each work on exhibit using a disarmingly personable tone. Sewell meticulously destabilizes all-too-familiar vistas of American suburbia, imposing a translucent scrim of violence onto objects ordinarily earmarked for passive consumption. Video games, television, toys of every kind become eerily macabre, giving the lie to the placid everydayness of his themes.