Titled, ‘Plus Ultra’ in a nod to soccer super fans, Brian Alfred’s latest solo show at Miles McEnery Gallery alternates between empty arenas and silhouetted crowd scenes including marathoners and masked figures holding flares in a haze created by smoke bombs. In the middle ground between colorful but coldly angular architecture and super-heated crowd scenes, Alfred introduces solitary figures hang gliding at a distance or here, seated alone against a colorful pattern of stadium seating. The artist doesn’t elaborate on how mega fandom materializes, going from an individual’s interest to a collective fever, rather the pictures’ power is in suggesting a jarringly large gap between solitary and group behavior. (On view through Aug 14th).
