THRU APRIL 24 – Alto Gallery

In the current COVID-19 climate, isolation has become a way of life. We’ve developed a compelling desire for conversations that are spontaneous, emotional, authentic. Separation has posed a greater need to hear each other’s reassuring voices, and thus we’ve been engaging in more telephone conversations. After the Tone is a series of larger-than-life paintings based on telephone scenes from movies. Many of them are from older films, where twisted cords and pointed antennas hark back to a time when phones had buttons or dials, not screens, and they were tethered to a landline while restricted to a certain location. As our notions of aloneness and solitude have blurred during the pandemic, these cinematic moments seem relevant now as we’ve regressed to staying home more often, using the phone as a lifeline. ALEX PAOZOLS seeks to give the messy mix of exalted everyday life a sense of rhythm and color with his art. The cinematic subjects of his paintings are often torn by fathomless fear and a yearning to feel less like outsiders in their own world.