The work of Alex Yanes in City Link’s “Fresh Art”
April 6, 2010

Alex Yanes describes “The Fisherman,” a large installation that incorporates 12 canvases, as the centerpiece of [Harmony], the Miami artist’s solo exhibition that will open at Museo Vault during Wynwood’s Second Saturday Artwalk. At the core of his installation is a large canvas that depicts a kimono-clad fisherman with a Fu Manchu mustache leaning into a woven basket containing a red snapper.

“He’s got this grin like he’s superhappy,” Yanes says. “But even though he’s caught that one fish and he’s fine for the day and has all he needs, he’s thinking about all these other fish.” Those thoughts are represented on surrounding canvases depicting colorful fish scales. The installation also includes two wooden fish that appear to be looking at the fisherman.

One of a dozen works in the show, “The Fisherman” depicts a cycle closely tied to Yanes’ artistic career, which has included his fine art and more-lucrative commercial projects. Like the angler who imagines returning home with more than that night’s dinner, artists dream of having more time to paint what they’re passionate about. Commercial projects buy them that time and become part of a never-ending cycle that involves many choices.

After some fruitful years spent working for clients such as Red Bull, Kleenex and Publix, which recruited him to create its annual calendar for two consecutive years, Yanes is returning to his roots. His father and grandfather taught him how to use power tools as a kid, so Yanes and his buddies would get scrap wood from Home Depot and build skateboard ramps they’d turn into a mini skatepark. Graffiti and tattoos also inspired him.

Yanes is again wielding his grandfather’s jigsaw, this time to cut images he draws on wood. He sands the cutouts, paints them with acrylic, spray enamel and epoxy resin, and assembles themlike a puzzle. He also incorporates painted cutouts onto doors he’s using as canvases, an idea he got when asked to paint live during Art Basel Miami Beach a few years ago.

“I went to Home Depot because Pearl was closed so I couldn’t get a canvas,” Yanes explains. “I came across a door and I’m like, ‘Wow, they make doors without holes for the knob? This is awesome!’” Soon, he was using wood doors in triptychs.

Yanes, who last August opened a studio at the Bakehouse Art Complex, isn’t afraid of artistic undertakings that can lead in unexpected directions. In 2008, he and a few other artists opened Alternate Space Art Gallery at CocoWalk in Coconut Grove. The gallery, which lasted eight months, was required to stay open until 10 p.m., even on the slowest nights.

“I was there on a Sunday night hating life, thinking, ‘Why am I here?’ ” Yanes recalls. Then, the woman who designs Publix’s calendars arrived, admired his painted koi and, soon after, Yanes replaced Britto as Publix’s The 2010 calendar, which depicts South Florida’s native endangered species, was distributed to hundreds of thousands of Publix customers and inserted into 200,000 Miami newspapers. The downside, Yanes says, is that many people now know him only for his commercial work. Now that he’s socked away some money from commercial projects, he’s ready to show them another side of his work.

During Art Basel, agent Michael Margulies dropped into Yanes’ studio and liked what he saw. By January, Yanes was offered a show in the project room of developer David Lombardi’s Museo Vault, a high-security, climate-controlled art-storage facility that Yanes describes as a Fort Knox for art.

One painting in the show, “Minnows,” hangs on two horizontal wooden doors and features the black-and-white heads of balding men, all facing toward the space between the doors, while another head, in color, looks in the opposite direction. “It’s about not being a sheep and conforming and not giving up on my career as an artist and always sticking with it,” Yanes says.

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