DECEMBER 13, 2017 – JANUARY 19, 2018

Opening Reception with the Artist
Wednesday, December 13, 6 – 8 PM

As part of In Focus/Enfoque, the ambitious multi-institution exhibition taking place throughout Charlotte from fall of 2017 to spring of 2018, SOCO Gallery is pleased to present HOME, an exhibition of photographs by Alejandro Cartagena. The Monterrey, Mexico-based artist will be showing works from his renowned Carpoolers and Suburbia Mexicana series. HOME will engage viewers with Cartagena’s powerful works that employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. The gallery will host a public opening reception on Wednesday, December 13 from 6 – 8PM. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery.

The Carpoolers series, which has been shown in exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles, as well as in Brazil, Holland, Italy, Mexico, and Spain, among others, is also the subject of a catalogue now in its second edition. The series was taken from the height of a bridge south of Monterrey, in the early morning hours when workers were commuting into the larger cities. The series was best described in a review by Matt McCann in The New York Times: “He was peeking into the backs of the pickup trucks, where construction workers pile together on their way to earn an honest living. His photo series, Carpoolers, is an effort to peer inside these tiny worlds that straddle public and private.” The also-lauded Suburbia Mexicana series is described by the artist as “a five-part project that revolves around the representation of the current Mexican suburban sprawl.” As Cartegena observes, “I feel that my commitment as a photographer is not to denounce our need for a household, but rather to point out the struggle we face following the ideals of a capitalistic system while striving for fairer cities in which to live.”

Alejandro Cartagena (B. 1977, Mexican)

Alejandro Cartagena received his Maestría en Artes Visuales from the Universidad Autónoma De Nuevo León in Mexico, 2009 - 2011. His works are in numerous private and public collections including SFMoMA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Portland Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; as well as MAM, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Fototeca del Centro de las Artes, Monterrey N.L., Mexico, among others. He received the Critical Mass Book Award in 2009 for his series Suburbia Mexicana.