Alex Headlam is a vibrant thinker and brilliant artist, creating dynamic, imaginative realms with his work. He unveiled his solo exhibition, “Lower East Side Paintings,” at Colonna Contemporary in Wayne, Pennsylvania. We had the privilege of witnessing his art up close and personal.
This collection of work is a testament to Headlam's unique artistic journey, which began with childhood explorations in play-doh and has since evolved into a powerful visual language that captures the essence of New York City's iconic neighborhood.
With his innovative use of AI and an eye for the layered complexities of urban life, Aleqth invites viewers to experience the Lower East Side through his unique lens. Each canvas is a window into a world where pop culture and gritty reality collide, sparking conversations about identity, memory, and the shared human experience.
Aleqth and Stonez sat down for an artist interview to discuss his creative process, and the deeper meanings that lie beneath the surface of "Lower East Side Paintings."
Stonez: First off, amazing show, brother. Can you share a specific encounter from the Lower East Side that influenced a key work in this exhibition?
Aleqth: Honestly, my experiences just walking through the Lower East Side, visiting places, moving around, seeing friends, being at parks. You're never doing just one thing in the Lower East Side. There's always an influx of energy and characters around you, and I couldn't get the inspiration off me. It felt like a multi-sensory thing, where I'm eating ice cream or funnel cake and there's homeless people throwing up on one side of me, with Tik Tok girls filming videos in their mini skirts and socks on another.
I wanted to encapsulate that feeling and reintroduce it to the people who don't know what the Lower East Side is like. Going around the galleries in New York, I wasn't seeing stuff like this, and when I first got to New York that's what I thought I was going to see. So, this is me advocating for myself in a way because this is the work that I believed in, but no one was really showing it.
Stonez: You're not only advocating for yourself, but you're advocating for the realness of the city as well. Being able to take what you see, what you feel, and put it all in a painting. That's a seemingly impossible feat, but you achieved that. How did you choose which elements of New York to capture on a canvas and which to omit?
Aleqth: My process is a lot of give and take. A lot of times I just bombard the canvas with ideas and composition only to have it serve as a catalyst or impetus for another decision to be made on top of that. I really believe in this element of contingency in artwork. One mistake is not just a mistake, it actually is that thing that leads to another decision made, that ends up being layered onto until the final outcome.
Being in New York, there's a lot of that. You see street signs, ads, wheatpaste, things stripped away and left behind, and then that new layer on top. I was really into that visually. I was hanging around a lot of musicians and I noticed that there's something like that in music. Sometimes there's a note in the background that has reverb that carries over and adds to the texture and sound. I wanted to do that with the art work too. It's a hip-hop thing, if you know the history of hip-hop it's very sample-based. I sampled from the Jimmy Neutron logo and characters, the Jamaican flag, blending new textures with nostalgia and adding my own touches in a sort of cyclical pattern to find a balance.
Stonez: I agree with your perspective on layers in music and art. There are so many elements and influences that come together in the creative process before the final song or work of art takes shape. You've taken these famous characters everyone knows and totally made them your own. Your style really shines through, and it's clear the city has had a big influence on your art. Also, your use of AI to achieve this is very innovative.
Aleqth: Thank you, that's the stuff that I like and I don't see it as often but when I do, it takes my mind in a new direction. Are you familiar with the idea of an epilogue?
Stonez: Yes
Aleqth: The story continues. I always carry a narrative with me, even after the book is done, what's next? Everything after is just you making it up as you go along. I realized that I want to make a world of epilogues. These memories that I've carried, these experiences, how would I push them forward?
I remember being in Jamaica watching Jimmy Neutron, but then there was Reggae music playing outside. I would be watching American cartoons, but the environment around was warm and caribbean. It felt like I was watching a different Jimmy Neutron than children in the United States.
Stonez: I love that context too, taking Jimmy Neutron and adding another texture on top of it while also being able to embody and see yourself in the art is inspiring. What were the main challenges in translating New York's dynamic energy into a controlled canvas?
Aleqth: Knowing when to ease off and when to drive forward. I've never surfboarded, but that's what it feels like when you're in New York. It's very shifty, you really have to be on it. Luckily with the process of painting you can add something, and even though you know that the piece has been changed forever you can keep adding layers and moments until it feels right. New York has also taught me tough love. That's definitely in the work. Sometimes I would have a really good composition and I would try something new, and if it didn't work I had to get back up, push it a little further, and trust in it. And that actually happened with almost all of the paintings in this collection.
Stonez: I love how you described paintings as moments. While creating, you can often often get caught up on each stroke or mistake, but when you look at the process as a series of moments it's comparable to life. You have to push forward to finish something. You can't be upset if something doesn't turn out a certain way, because you'll always end up with something beautiful. So, each piece is meant to explore the human condition. Could you discuss how one of your favorite pieces in the collection addresses this theme?
Aleqth: Not many talk about this piece and I'm still working through it myself. But this one's titled, "Alone." I always have a sort of "Jungian" experience. When I painted this I was in a weird transitional moment and I had this crazy up in my career, then there was sudden dismantling. Things were falling around me and I was trying capture it. I was fighting against myself. When I did this painting it was different. I had gotten some new oils to get back to the roots of how I started painting. I revisited a motif from my childhood of a vampire-like cartoon. This is me going all the way back to what I would draw in notebooks. I was trying to express that I want to be heard and seen, but I'm still stuck in this cartoon world. Maybe this childlike energy is keeping me here and preventing me from saying what I want to say. I intentionally juxtaposed that feeling with using oil paint which seemed "older" or "refined." I'm still working through this painting, I still haven't figured it out yet.
Stonez: Last question... What do you hope viewers take away from the Lower East Side paintings?
Aleqth: There was an initial rejection when I tried to introduce this into the New York art scene, and I'm hoping people realize I wasn't just trying to make cool paintings. I was really doing the work, investigating identity, and highlighting the shared identity with people in realms of memory or cultural context. I'm hoping that they walk away feeling like they see something new and something old. Then maybe they go out in the world and see that in other things too. I hope people develop a generative way of imagining things, having ideas pop up from other ideas. The idea of layers, we can keep adding until it's right. Take a step back and zoom out.
"Lower East Side Paintings" invites us to peel back the layers of meaning and find connection in the shared experiences that unite us all.
This candid conversation is proof of how resilience, experimentation, and adaptability shape the creative process. Aleqth's journey shows us that real growth often comes from challenging moments, and that the key to success is remaining open to change while finding beauty in the unexpected.
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