Piscatorial Investigations: by Alberto Rey
Oil Paintings from Iceland, Montana, Arizona, Wyoming, Catskills, and Western New York
in the Ground Floor Gallery
February 18 through May 29, 2005

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Alberto Rey's work has always dealt with a search for the intersection of place and culture. Until this current series, most of Rey's paintings have dealt with his mixed Cuban-American heritage. Having moved from Cuba to Mexico as a three-year-old, and then to the United States, Rey's previous paintings have been landscapes that attempt to reconcile his cultural identity and the home of origin he cannot remember. He has painted landscapes that combine family stories of Cuba, imagined landscapes, and finally, first-hand images after a pilgrimage to his birth country in 1998.

On first observation, Rey's new series of paintings of trout, many fished from around his home in Western New York, seems like a radical departure from his previous work. Upon closer consideration, however, the trout series continues Rey's desire to connect personally with geography. He paints the steelhead that return seasonally to the Lake Erie tributary he can see from his studio. These fish, like Rey, have a life preoccupation with finding home. Acclaimed trout painter and author James Prosek observes a correlation between “the steelhead, a non-native trout introduced from California to New York State, and the artist, also transplanted originally from Cuba to the banks of the same stream”. Rey goes beyond his home to seek trout from many different landscapes, all the while trying to create images that help people re-connect with their land in a way that is “being lost as generations become continually disconnected from a lifestyle that relies on the landscape for survival.” He said I envision the project creating indigenous symbols of a culture.