Alvaro Barrington

Alvaro Barrington is an artist based in London and New York. Born in Venezuela to Grenadian and Haitian parents, he was raised between the Caribbean and Brooklyn. 

Barrington's practice is informed by an unwavering commitment to community. He considers influence and exchange to be crucial, drawing upon a host of artistic and cultural references in his work. His personal touchstones include rapper Tupac Shakur and 90s hip-hop culture, 1920s jazz and the Harlem Renaissance, Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey, modernist icons such as Willem de Kooning, Paul Klee, Agnes Martin and Louise Bourgeois, and his art-world peers. While he considers himself primarily a painter, Barrington's practice comprises performance, fashion and collaborations with the Notting Hill Carnival in London. His approach to painting is similarly inclusive, embracing non-traditional materials and techniques imbued with personal and cultural references such as burlap, concrete, cardboard, and sewing. His interdisciplinary process follows in the footsteps of Robert Rauschenberg's groundbreaking Combines, which Barrington references by incorporating real objects into the picture plane, including carpets, steel drums, brooms, and fans. As an artist he is continually expanding his constellation of influences while always acknowledging the formative role of art history in his practice. 

Selected solo exhibitions and projects include GRACE, Tate Britain Commission, London (2024); Island Life, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2023); They Got Time: YOU BELONG TO THE CITY, Galerie Thaddeus Ropac Pantin, Paris (2023); 91-98 jfk-lax border, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2022) and Alvaro Barrington, MoMA PS1, New York (2017).  Group exhibitions include The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Traveled to Saint Louis Art Museum, MI (2023); The Drawing Centre Show, Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2022); Fire Figure Fantasy: Selection from the ICA Miami's Collection, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, FL (2022); The Earth, That is Sufficient, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2021) and Artists I Steal From, Thaddaeus Ropac, London (curated with Julia Peyton-Jones, 2019). Collections include the Insitute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the Hepworth Wakefield, K11 Art Foundation, The Loewe Foundation, Fundacion NMAC, Rennie Museum, Start Museum, X Museum, Beijing and the Tate Britain.