The Armory New York

Presenting a solo booth by RF. Alvarez

September 4-7, 2025

Booth F05

For his solo presentation at the Armory Fair with Martha's Gallery, artist RF. Alvarez has created a body of work representative of themes throughout his oeuvre, but with a specific focus on displays of sensual tension within the central Texas landscape. Bodies ache – and the neon lights of a honky tonk glow – with potential. Temptation abounds; the night is coming.

In the large, central work of the show – titled “We're Still Here!” – we see an array of figures on the precipice of movement: eyes are about to be met, a dress strap has fallen, a game of pool is about to be won, a lighter has been ignited. A direct reference to Cadmus's “The Fleet's In!” (1934), the work displays the joyful comfort of queer existence within a space typically associated with astringency towards non-heteronormative identity, and yet the potential of chaos lingers.

The idea that queerness has already embedded itself within the very fibers of the American South continues across the rest of the works, in which Alvarez presents a very homoerotic depiction of Southern machismo and the spaces it inhabits. We see a country boy in Levi's jeans and a trucker hat, presented almost as a classical crouching nude or Venus. In another work, a figure lies amongst prairie grasses, taking off his jeans, as a sort of pastoral odalisque. This clear reference to art historical presentations of soft figures contrasts with the stoicism of cowboy masculinity to present a definitively new interpretation of the American South: as an identity, but also as a place that has always been – despite its reputation and politics – one of lustful potential and wistful tenderness.

Javits Center
Crystal Palace Entrance
429 11th Avenue, New York, NY 10001