Join us on Thursday, February 16, for an evening of fine food, fine drink, and fine conversation, moderated by VACNJ Director of Exhibitions Kristen Evangelista. Exhibiting artist Jairo Alfonso will discuss his work, focusing on his exhibition Jairo Alfonso: Objectscapes on view in the Main Gallery. This intimate affair will begin at 6:30 PM with a cocktail hour welcome with sparkling wine and hors d'oeuvres followed by an a conversation with the artist in the Main Gallery surrounded by Jairo’s larger-than-life artwork. The evening will wind down with dessert and coffee in the lobby.  

Jairo Alfonso is a Cuban-born artist living and working in Hudson County, New Jersey. He was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1974. He graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) and from the Escuela Nacional de Arte (ENA) in Havana. He moved to the United States from Spain in 2013.

Alfonso’s work has been featured in more than 10 solo exhibitions worldwide, including Instrumentaciones, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, Havana, Cuba (2000); and in over 60 group shows, including Useless: Machines for Dreaming, Thinking, and Seeing, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2019); Flow: Economies of the Look and Creativity in Contemporary Art from the Caribbean, IDB Cultural Center Art Gallery, Washington, DC (2014); Cuban America: An Empire State of Mind, Lehmann College Art Gallery, New York (2014); Occupying, Building, Thinking: Poetic and Discursive Perspectives on Contemporary Cuban Video Art (1990–2010), University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (2013); Politics: I don’t like it, but it likes me, Laznia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland (2013); Killing Time: An Exhibition of Cuban Artists from the ’80s to the Present, Exit Art, New York (2007); and Batiscafo / Proyecto Circo, Eighth Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011).

Alfonso has participated in various artist residencies, including the Fountainhead Residency, Miami, Florida (2019); Marble House Project, Dorset, Vermont (2015); and Guttenberg Arts, New Jersey (2014). He was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2017. Alfonso’s work appears in private collections as well as in the public collections of the Pérez Art Museum, Miami, Florida; the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California; the permanent collection of the province of Hainaut, Belgium; and the Havana Galerie Collection, Zürich, Switzerland, among others.