Alex Delapena Forth Passing Empty
November 13th – December 12th, 2023

Opening Monday November 13th 6 – 9 PM

Born: Subic Bay, Philippines
October 4, 1989 6:24 pm

Sun: Libra 11° 47’
Moon: Sagittarius 7° 57’
Venus: Scorpio 25° 55′

‘The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was.’

—Wm. Shakespeare, A Midsummer-night’s Dream 4.1.212-215

Saturn dangled overhead, like a distant mobile, the moment Alex Delapena was wrapped in this world. The planet was said to represent among other things, lead and its tacit weight. To hold something so heavy over anyone’s head, but particularly one still so small and fragile, seemed odd. And yet it evoked no fear in him. Instead, Delapena would grow to embrace this contraction and others Saturn speaks for. The earthly possibilities of light, the opacity of shadows, the multitudes in a black and white photograph, the genuine artifact and the false appearance— would all become sources of fascination for Delapena within his creative life.


In his book The Dream and the Underworld, James Hillman writes, “Dreams are made by a coagulative process: condensation, intensification (over-determination), reduction (abbreviation), iteration (repetition), concretizing. The synthetic cooking operation of the dream-work […] brings disparate ingredients together and concocts them into new things.” Delapena’s photographs are treated much the same way— repeatedly processing source images as photographic objects until they become abstracted textures, pieces of a new visual language.

In a dream you accept its world and the assembly of shapes, and materials with which it speaks. Roused from sleep, ‘reality’ may press you to make sense of what you’ve witnessed, to turn the experience into something the waking world can inspect. But dream images are slippery and elusive like Delapena’s photographs. In one he places a rough, tar-textured shape against a soft, hazy background. The apparent thinness of the material gives it a startling airiness that frees the object from the weight it might otherwise carry. We anticipate a photograph will be a direct translation of light, something instantly recognizable, definable— a rose is a rose. Delapena’s translation of light is unexpected, it lets us into a world that defies the rules that our own crudely imposes. Even with its deceptively simple arrangement of opposites— what is bright is leaden, what is dark is light— his work steps on every line to raise above our heads something which fascinates.

–Marty Windahl

Alex Delapena has recently exhibited at Human Resources, after / time, Helen J Gallery, and Aupuni Space. He has held residencies at the Center of Photography at Woodstock and 3331 Arts Chiyoda. He received his MFA from the University of California, Riverside and BFA from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He currently is an instructor for the Los Angeles City Community District and Pasadena City College.