Stay Gold
Álvaro P-FF returns to the walls of La Fiambrera with Stay Gold, a brand new set of serigraphs. Each work is dedicated to vindicating the freak minority to which he feels he belongs, a dimension in which people live their lives clinging to a song, act or to the worn out copies of their favourite records. This worldview coexists with nods to the city itself, skateboarding, bars, the night, love and desire. Stay Gold is a war cry. An expression of encouragement and a hymn to eternal youth for lovers of music who spend the days entangled with their favourite bands and songs. A testament to those who buy and sell records, DJs, musicians, technicians, groupies, bartenders, go-go dancers, urban tribes. Stay Gold is essentially for fans of all persuasions.
Being accustomed to providing commissions for famous national and international musicians and working to client and project constraints, Stay Gold allows his imagination run wild to capture and communicate everything that goes through his head. Circumstances caused the Madrid-base artist to be forced to rest for several months after surgery due to a bad skateboard fall. The seclusion allowed him full scope to get in touch with his emotions for these images to take shape.
“Preparing an exhibition is very similar to that of making an album. You arrive at the studio with ideas in your head. With “riffs” to work on. However, as work progresses, the initial idea is diluted in a river that sometimes overflows into places you didn’t suspect it would. Stay Gold began as a tribute to collecting vinyl records and as it progressed, it meandered to where music moved from being a physical format to becoming the soundtrack to a moment. Whether it was listening to cassettes in the van or waiting at the door of a venue, the show is a tribute to people to whom musical culture is a fundamental pillar of their lives. This encompasses everything from buying music, fashion, shows and the mixtapes that pounded your eardrums on the way to school.”
Álvaro P-FF
The serigraphs provide clues with regard to Álvaro’s favourites. Artists such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Ramones, The Clash, Dolly Parton, Otis Redding, Descendents, The Cramps, Nick Cave, Blondie, Dictators, Redd Kross, Bad Religion, and Dead Kennedys are some that reside upon his own private Olympus, faithful allies during his convalescence. All works are meticulously reproduced as screen prints on high quality paper. Limited editions (usually 25), numbered and signed by the artist.
Álvaro Pérez Fajardo is one of the most respected designers in the Spanish music industry. Since he began drawing for the Madrid underground scene in the mid-nineties, his covers and posters have illustrated the music that has accompanied us for twenty years. Among hundreds of works we can mention those made for national artists such as Bunbury, Calamaro, Sabina or Luz Casal and international artists such as Ozzy Osbourne, Korn, The Lumineers or Lana del Rey. His peculiar style mixes rock poster graphics with Mexican imagery, black humour, gore movies, social criticism, the political-propagandistic poster of totalitarian regimes and Art-Deco. He uses icons of pop culture to punctuate this vision. Álvaro’s work is created in The Fly Factory studio that he shares with his brother, the photographer Juan Pérez Fajardo. He’s worked with La Fiambrera since 2014 and this is his third show with the gallery.
