In both In June Park’s paintings and Andrius Alvarez-Backus’s sculptures, fragments of daily life appear out of context, evoking both recognition and uncertainty. Body parts and household objects become self-contained artifacts–details that might otherwise be lost amid the noise of overstimulation. In retraining our focus onto an unseen whole, the specificity of which ultimately gives way to indeterminacy, the artists reenact an increasingly familiar tension: the pull between the human desire for intimacy and a cultural drift toward permanence.

If the blend of realism and abstraction in “Ordinary Permanence” captures a certain contemporary psychology, it is one that Park and Alvarez-Backus know intimately. As students of Columbia’s MFA program, from which they both graduated earlier this year, the uncertainty that marks every young artist’s life was intensified by an atmosphere of political unrest and institutional upheaval.

If their practices are any indication, they chose to take inspiration from past generations understated social commentary rather than the overwhelming microcosm of the present. Alvarez-Backus’s minimalism and modest materials recall queer, multidisciplinary artists such as Robert Gober, Félix González-Torres, and Harmony Hammond. Park, meanwhile, cites a range of postwar influences–from the abstraction of Gerhard Richter to the cool formalism of the Pictures Generation–bridging intense gestures with photographic detachment.

Though the works feel urgent and contemporary, traces of autobiography subtly emerge. Alvarez-Backus, raised in a family of doctors and nurses, reimagines the theme of caregiving through found objects and generative processes like casting and woodworking. His “failed” forms–a wax shirt, cadaver-like dress shoes–strip away functionality to reveal new emotional and aesthetic dimensions. Each object reasserts itself as something organic yet invented.

Park’s paintings, by contrast, render fragments of urban life in prismatic close-up. Having moved from Incheon, South Korea, to Santiago, Chile, at age nine–where his father worked in a shoe factory–Park infuses cosmopolitan uniformity with warm-blooded detail. Though shoes, coats, and eyewear recur as motifs, he resists the notion of autobiography. Instead, filtered through radiant shifts of light and color, Park’s cropped compositions elevate the mundane to the near-celestial.

Placed alongside Alvarez-Backus’s embodied sculptures, Park’s paintings extend an invitation to intimacy. The dialogue between the two bodies of work surfaced organically. In preparing for the exhibition on an accelerated timeline, echoes and cross-references emerged in real time: Alvarez-Backus unearthed a set of medical trays after seeing the metallic surfaces in Park’s studio, while Park’s painting of a church pew mirrored the wood surfaces in Alvarez-Backus’s recent pieces.

Their duo show thus becomes an experiment in shared sensibility–perhaps a breaking-out of sensorial isolation. For viewers accustomed to the constant pulse of overstimulation, the quiet charge of visual intimacy these works offer may feel revelatory. Despite belonging to a generation often defined by impermanence and individualism, Park and Alvarez-Backus remind us that even fleeting connections leave a lasting impression.

– Samuel Anderson

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS


Andrius Alvarez-Backus (he/him; b. Warwick, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, drawing, and painting. Through the transformation of everyday objects, he amplifies their poetic connotations to evoke personal allegories of intimacy, embodiment, and memory. Using mixed media assemblage, his practice interrogates how desire bridges beauty and abjection, and how the semiotics of materials convey cultural meanings.

He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (2023), and his Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University (2025). His work has been shown internationally at the Wallach Art Gallery, Fragment Gallery, SK Gallery, Plato Gallery, Chelsea Walls, Black Brick Project, the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, and The Blanc, among others. His first museum solo exhibition, "Desastre!," was on view at the Fitchburg Art Museum from June through August 2023, where his work is also included in the permanent collection. Recent honors include the Richard Lewis Bloch Memorial Prize, the Martin A. Rothenberg Travel Fellowship, the D'Arcy Hayman Scholarship, and the Quinta Carolina Scholarship. He was the inaugural Nicholas Dahl Visiting Artist at the Provincetown Art Association & Museum in 2025 and will be an artist-in-residence at Smack Mellon from 2025-2026.

Andrius Alvarez-Backus' works were created while in residence at Smack Mellon.




In June Park (b. 1996, Incheon, South Korea) is a painter currently based in New York. He spent his teenage years in Santiago and moved to the United States to pursue his career in the arts. His paintings capture archived moments in our lives, which are then rendered onto the surface of a canvas through slow, acrylic layers. The layers act as stains that contemplate space and color possibilities. He received his BFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University in 2025. His work has been shown at Wallach Art Gallery, Albert Van Abbe Huis, Alyssa Davis Gallery, Offline Gallery, The Blanc, MEZZANINE Studios, Dawn Eleven Contemporary Art Foundation, Automat Collective, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, among others. Recent honors include Glasier Fellowship, Centro Cecorea & Korean, The Hopper Prize, Becky Westcott Memorial Award, and New American Paintings.