I Was Only Here A Little While

RF Alvarez’s solo exhibition I Was Only Here A Little While explores the interconnected and disparate lives of strangers. Alvarez contrasts earnest colored pencil drawings with diaristic musings against large-scale monochromatic paintings of crowds as they gather in restaurants, clubs, and other spaces in an investigation of public and private personas. With titles alluding to Greek epics and myths, Alvarez’s scenes act as allegories to larger themes of identity, community, and purpose.

“It’s not the lovers I dream about, not the dinners with friends, the waiters dropping off glasses of wine. It’s not the movie theatre or the music show or the cocktail bar. It’s not a particular place, not a particular person, not even a particular moment. What I miss, what I ache for, are the strangers. I miss overheard conversations from lives that aren’t mine. I miss the faces that populate the corner of my eye, the laughter that fills the back of the room. I miss sharing the air with them, sweating up against them, squeezing past them. I miss their warm shoulder pressed against mine on a train. I miss their kindness and their rudeness and their annoying little indiscretions. I miss how they made me feel: interesting, lonely, invisible, beautiful. I miss those nights out where I’d swim among them, dissolve into them, off on a journey, losing myself to them. I miss being a stranger myself.”

RF Alvarez

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