Taken as a whole, Kwartler’s work defies a singular style. Moving effortlessly between figuration, abstraction, and representation the work draws from imagery and experience; from offhand observation and moments taken directly from the artist's life, to the art historical and the textual. Kwartler has developed an approach resembling an interior monologue or conversation; his paintings make leaps, digressions, and diversions between themselves which taken together read as a web of continuous connection and becoming. Using a variety of techniques, from slow pictorial rendering in oil to the fast polished surfaces of his plaster ‘frescos’ each painting follows its own material and visual logic within the larger whole. Individually, the discreet works form a kind of catalog of thought and observation. Collectively, the works are combined and set against one another forming a lexicon that functions like a visual grammar for thoughts in time.

Alex Kwartler received his MFA from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ and his BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY. Kwartler has mounted three solo exhibitions at Magenta Plains. He has exhibited his work at The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; 47 Canal, New York, NY; Parapet Real Humans, St. Louis, MO, MoMA PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY; Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; White Columns, New York, NY; Bortolami Gallery, New York, NY; Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, NY; Martos Gallery, New York, NY; Petzel Gallery, New York, NY; and Wallspace, New York, NY. His exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Frieze, Artforum and Art in America. Kwartler’s paintings were featured in “Painting Abstraction” edited by Bob Nickas and published by Phaidon Press. Kwartler was artist-in-residence at The Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX in Spring 2017. The artist lives and works in New York, NY.

Born in 1979, New York, NY.
Lives and works in New York, NY.