About
Alex Emmons is a multimedia artist drawing inspiration from historical artifacts, industrial complexes, dream states, and American kitsch. His paintings and sculptures re-contextualize the familiar through a visual language of magical absurdism in order to uncover the ways in which social structures permeate our everyday, lying somewhere just under the surface. Through navigating the tensions that arise between the visual aesthetics of beauty, with the violences of these complexes, Emmons suggests that in the stratum of life, beauty and horror aren’t diametrically opposed to each other, but rather co-constitutive. Through surreal dream-like imagery he balances playfulness with the heavy undertones that characterize his subject matter. Emmons plays with function as an alternative ideological structure to these social structures, in which dysfunctional or obsolete objects fall into the ornamental or artifactual. Objects that play in the realm of art and design are concerned with systems of manufacturing and reproduction, as regimented structures antithetical to humanity. Narratives are formed through material juxtaposition, High-low materiality is ubiquitous creating dialogue around found objects, and the nature of materials.The conceptualization of these social structures trickle down into physical manifestations of power through biopolitics, the push and pull between rigid social systems and the nature of being human at constant odds with each other.
Through his focus on material and layered imagery, Subjects become distorted dreamlike reflections, exploring the unseen forces that shape our world through contradiction.Balancing representation and abstraction there is often an element of hybridization or reduction to highlight the absurdity of modernity, referential to intrinsically violent structures, the warping of violence becoming the material itself. A tool reduced to its essence becomes stone, militance removed leaves a faint residue of its original form. Dreams reduced to their core essence become pure feeling, resulting in novel forms obscured but intrinsically tied to its origins.
Alex Emmons’ practice seeks to reconcile with a reality rife with contradictions, synthesizing unique feelings found in the intersections of seemingly oppositional concepts, depicting a world that is simultaneously ominous and beautiful.
CV
Alex Emmonsaemmons458@gmail.com
Solo Exhibitions
2026
DREGMANCY, These Days, LA,CA February 14 – March 21 2026
Group Exhibitions
2026
Venice Family Clinic Charity Auction, LA,CA May 8 – May 17 2026
2025
Venice Family Clinic Charity Auction LA,CA May 9 -May 18 2025
Small Objects Show, AUTOBODY autobody, LA,CA June 28 – July 3 2025
U haul Art Fair, AUTOBODY autobody, NYC September 5 – September 7 2025
Post Show Vol. 2, Post Show, LA,CA Nov 15 2025
MUEBLE : TOTALE, Gallery 945, LA,CA December 19 – December 20 2025
2024
Works In Progress!, Known Studio, LA,CA April 18 – April 20 2024
Venice Family Clinic Charity Auction LA,CA May 10 – May 19 2024
Best In Show, Melrose Botanical Garden, LA,CA July 6 – August 11 2024
2023
GAG! These Days, These Days, LA,CA December 16 – December 30 2023
2022
With/in With/out These Days LA,CA April 9 – May 1 2022
Curatorial Projects
2024
GAG! And Known Studios preset WIP! “Works in Progress”, organized by Alex Emmons, Raul (Su) Morales and Known Studios LA,CA April 18 – April 20 2024
Spirit Halloween, organoized by Zoe Alameda, Alex Carmen and Alex Emmons, Lonestar Projects, LA,CA October 11 – October 22
Press
Comfort Magazine ISSUE 2 portfolio feature, November 2023