Alex Queral
"Face | Book - Phonebook Portraits"
November 1 - December 21, 2013

Projects Gallery Philadelphia is pleased to present Alex Queral’s “Face | Book – Phonebook Portraits”.  In his third solo exhibition with the gallery, Alex explores the duality of the recognizable and the anonymous in modern society.  Works being featured include his signature hand-carved telephone books, as well as large-scale digital prints.  

Born in Cuba with a migration to Mexico before landing in the U.S., the artist has experienced first hand the sense of invisibility.  Taking, until now, an easily discarded object like a residential telephone book with its lists of thousands of faceless names and numbers, Alex transforms them into three-dimensional portraits of the famous and no-so famous of today’s mass media.  Using the simple tools of an X-ACTO® knife and a little acrylic paint, his talented hands dissect, eviscerate and reconstruct these pages of soft material into incredible art objects.  Utilizing classical carving techniques on an unexpected material, Queral brings forth the individual from the faceless masses. The artist crafts recognizable visages, vaguely familiar but elusively foreign, as well as evoking his own cast of characters from the found sheets of paper.

What happens to these images when you enlarge them five fold, returning them to the cinematic context from which they came?  The graphic details become surprising clear.  The object transcends the material and becomes the focal point of discovery and serendipitous moments appear.  John Wayne’s given name (in the female) appears on his forehead; Clint Eastwood has a listing of funeral homes, perhaps a reference to the many men shot by Dirty Harry; Zimmerman is hidden behind the head of Bob Dylan.   However, with either media, the distinctly iconic work of Alex Queral cannot be denied.

Alex Queral
"Perception : Reality"
April 3- 25, 2009

Cuban Alex Queral’s carved phonebooks receive “how’d-he-do-that?” attention wherever they travel. From local Philadelphians to citizens of Beruit to the millions in Europe who have discovered his work online and in the press, his lushly detailed carvings are created from the soft material of phonebooks. Utilizing classical carving techniques on an unexpected material, Queral brings forth the individual from the faceless masses. Queral crafts recognizable visages, vaguely familiar but elusively foreign, as well as evoking his own cast of characters from the bound sheets of paper.

Alex Queral
"Phone Book Heads"
May 6 - 28, 2005

Alex Queral started his artistic career as a professional jazz guitarist.  After more than a decade of following the wishes of his family, this Cuban-American decided to follow his heart.  Graduating magna cum laude with a B.F.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle, Alex then went on to earn his M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  Although he has shown primarily in the Philadelphia area, his works have also been exhibited in New York City and Mexico City. This Cuban-born artist uses recycled, unwanted material - the phone book, home of tens of thousands of names.  Into this discarded catalog, using a razor knife and acrylic, the artist carves a single portrait as if the names of all of the catalog members join together to form a single person.

Alex has been developing his "phone book heads" for several years and believes that "carving and painting a head from a phone directory celebrates the individual lost in the anonymous list of thousands of names that describes the size of the community". He also likes "the idea of creating something that is normally discarded every year into an object of longevity".  Whether whimsical, serious or even haunting, these 3-dimensional heads have a quality that enhances the feeling of the piece as an object as opposed to simply a picture.