JONATHAN H ALFAROb. 1992, Windsor, Ontario
Lives and works in Vancouver, BC
Work202620252024202320222021202020192018Select Projects2026
SIRENSIREN, People, Vancouver, BC - curatorial project
2025
Vulnerable Pleasures, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver School of Psychoanalysis with Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC2024
Dear Friends &, Resident Artist, The Capilano Review and The Western Front, Vancouver, BC2023
Curator’s Sauna, Canton-Sardine, Vancouver, BC2023
High-Fructose Sun, Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver, BC2023
Transmissions, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam, BC CVSelect Exhibitions2027
Candy-Sized, Free Economy, Vancouver, BC - forthcoming2026
Tender Threads, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC2026
SIRENSIREN, People, Vancouver, BC - curatorial project2025
Vulnerable Pleasures, Corpo Freudiano Vancouver Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis with Gallery Gachet, Vancouver, BC
2025
Fibre: CAROLINE ACHAINTRE, JONATHAN ALFARO, GHISLAIN BROWN-KOSSI, Wil Abale, Vancouver, BC2023
High-Fructose Sun, Burrard Arts Foundation – solo Vancouver, BC
2023
Thank You James H, Burrard Arts Foundation Garage – solo Vancouver, BC2023
Curator's Sauna, Canton-Sardine, Vancouver BC
2023
Transmissions, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam, BC
2018
Intertwined, Michael O’Brian Exhibition Commons, Vancouver, BCGrants, Awards + Residencies2024
Dear Friends &, Resident Artist, The Capilano Review and The Western Front, Vancouver, BC2023
Burrard Arts Foundation Artist Residency, Vancouver, BC2023
Canada Council for the Arts, Concept to Realization Grant2022
New Media Gallery Micro Residency Program, New Westminster, BC2022
Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Creation Grant2021
Canada Council for the Arts, Research and Crearion Grant2019
Audain Art Museum RBC Emerging Artist Program, Whistler, BCPublications + Published Writing2024
The Capilano Review Spring Issue2021
Kaur, Russna. Interviewed by Jonathan Alfaro. “A Conversation with: Russna Kaur.” 33 Acres Brewing Company, 22 April 2021 www.33acresbrewing.com/a-conversation-with-russna-kaur/2017
Alfaro, Jonathan. Keepsakes for the Displaced. Freq Magazine2017
Alfaro, Jonathan and Magalena Gorski. Catalytic Communities: People of the Hills. Freq Magazine, Vol 2, Issue 11.Artist Talks2026
Weaving Synposium, Surrey Art Gallery - forthcoming2025
Contemporary Arts Society of Vancouver, Studio Tour2024
Centre A, Writing Mentorship Program Studio Tour2024
Langara Artist Speaker Series2023
Langara Artist Speaker Series2023
Contemporary Arts Society of VancouverEducation2022
NSCAD University – Anna Leonowens Gallery Certificate in Gallery + Studio Management, Halifax, NS2020
BFA Visual Arts + Minor in Curatorial Studies – Emily Carr University, Vancouver, BCRelated Work2025
-
Preparator, Surrey Art Gallery, Surrey, BC2023
-
Archives + Library Catalogue Management, Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Vancouver, BC2023
-
Preparator, Art Gallery at Evergreen, Coquitlam BC
2023
-2026
Studio Manager, Brent Wadden Studio, Vancouver, BC2023
Programming Jury, Modern Fuel, Kingston, ON2023
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury2022
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury
2022
-2025
Museum Library Catalogue Management, Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC2022
Invigilator for exhibition 51@51, Rennie Museum, Vancouver, BC2022
Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Peer Jury2020
Project Management, The Museum of Other Realities, Vancouver, BC2010
Studio assistant to Nancy Patterson, Toronto, ON High-Fructose Sun
Burrard Arts Foundation
Vancouver, BC
September 6 - October 28, 2023
exhibition postcard
Closing Summer, oil on aluminum composite panel, 172.5 cm x 122 can (67.9 x 48 inches) 3 individual panels 57.5 cm x 122 cm (22.6 x 48 inches), 2023.Summer script, oil on aluminum composite panel, 61 cm x 1463 cm (24 x 576 inches) 12 individual panels 61 cm x 122 cm (24 x 48 inches), 2023. Soft Pumpkin, coloured pencil on paper, 10 cm x 20 cm (3.9 x 7.8 inches), 2023.Exhibition text by Gillian Haigh
Painting has always had a close relationship with time. As a representational medium and a historically driven discourse; the pictorial and conceptual aspects of the picture simultaneously function to capture and preserve a particular moment. In the practice of painting, time is an apparatus on which a painter builds their work, dictating how materials and processes unfold in the studio.
In creating the series High-Fructose Sun, Jonathan Alfaro uses time not only as a cognitive and material factor but also as a matter of form. Alfaro’s exhibition consists of a series of iterative paintings on 2 x 4-foot flat aluminium panels, each describing the same looping script but in shifting citric colours that pull and push the lines and ground back and forth. By narrowing the subject and form of these pieces, Alfaro functionally creates a series of works, each capturing the unique moment they were painted.
The work Summer Script, on the north and east walls, aligns the panels end to end. The long sequence of pictures creates a cinematic strip — each panel functioning as a narrative juncture. Yet, Alfaro’s abstract images do not follow any identifiable narrative or logic. It’s a humorous reference in Vancouver to appropriate the structure of a film strip; it famously was used by Vancouver conceptual photographers such as Ian Wallace and Viki Alexander in the 70s and 80s. Their avant-garde conceptual photo sequences couldn't be further from the uncontrolled whorling script and sentimental colours in Alfaro’s pictures.
Furthering this reference, the title of the panoramic painted work is strikingly similar to a 1974 Ian Wallace work ‘The Summer Script’, a 20-meter photo-sequence of 12 stills originating from a film Wallace produced in collaboration with Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham. Although Wallace was concerned with the possible cinematic qualities of the image, Alfaro’s adoption of panoramic sequence multiplies the meaning of ‘script’ from that of a cinematic variety to one of the written word.
One can also view the long line of pictures in Summer Script as a horizon, the warm vibrant colours reminiscent of a sunrise or set. The iterations function like Monet’s Rouen Cathedral, a series of impressionist paintings Monet created in the 1880s that captured the shifting light on the west facade of the gothic Rouen Cathedral. While Alfaro’s works similarly repeat in subject and divulge a change in time through their shifting colour – unlike Monet – Alfaro’s paintings do not depict the nuances of a physical existence. They remind me of a childhood painting of an imagined sunset, but depicting only the utopic boundless sky.
Others might describe the pictures in High-Fructose Sun as poetic due to their romantic visual character, the cursive script on each picture, and their aluminium flat paper-like ground. Closing Summer on the south wall of the gallery stacks three panels vertically, creating lines of calligraphy almost like a letter or page. Again this feels to be a particular reference to Vancouver, with the city’s strong and long-standing relationship with poetry – including
Vancouver institutions such as the Kootenay School of Writing and the Capilano Review. But here too Alfaro has playfully thwarted a direct citation; on closer inspection what appears to be cursive letters devolve into a series of looping lines, weaving in and out of dreamy fields of colours. While sentimental in their pigment and form the saccharine pictures are aware of their sweetness, as the title of the show suggests, delightfully dancing on the edge of cliché.
So if not cinematic, representational, or linguistic, in what structures or forms do Alfaro’s pictures function? If the works are indeed about time, what time do they capture? The paintings lay no claim to newness or genius, but instead, coyly adopt and queers historical pictorial structures. They capture the utopic longing; for an endless sweet summer sunset; for the perfect verse; for beauty; for harmony; for the perfect picture. That longing is quintessentially one of a painter, to be able to harmonise material and picture, image and concept, criticality and beauty.