Precognitions of a recurrent past
Alberto Ortega, Community Watch, oil on panel
Some Arcadia Contemporary painters produce work so rapidly, I wonder how many hours of sleep they’re able to get during an average year. It feels like Alberto Ortega’s last solo show at Arcadia Contemporary was a few months ago. You can see a tranche of his new paintings at Arcadia until Dec. 1. His visions feel paradoxically like precognitions of a past (circa 40s, 50s, maybe early 60s) we are destined to relive alone together. They are achingly haunting. They have the quality Bachelard called “oneiric” in The Poetics of Space, halfway between waking and sleep. He builds original dioramas and then stages twilight or night scenes that feel like intimate, antique precursors of Gregory Crewdon’s cinematic scenarios and then paints from views of these constructions. I’m eager to see the work on a visit to the city in a couple weeks.