As a child, the Austin-based artist RF. Alvarez spent summers at his family’s cattle ranch in Texas. His paintings — of tender scenes with his husband and their queer friend group — often feature cowboy hats and boots as a way to reconcile his past and present. In “I Remember Everything,” his biggest show to date, and his first on the West Coast, the 15 paintings and three ceramic works on view at Megan Mulrooney gallery in Los Angeles are darker and more brooding than his previous works. They still depict dinner parties and intimate moments, but with a palpable tension; eyes no longer meet, and hands do so furtively. But while the tenor of the paintings is angstier, Alvarez says they represent new advances in his practice: He’s found peace with his heritage, and he’s moved from directly portraying memories toward more allegorical imagery. “Gimme Shelter” (2025), a fractured self-portrait of the artist dancing, and “The Fall” (2025), which sees him lying beside a horse, foreground feeling rather than the facts of his life. His cheerier side will also be on display at the Armory Show in New York, where his booth with Martha’s gallery plays on one of the fair’s themes — the American South — with a two-panel painting of a rowdy honky-tonk, which he says is his way of showing a sexually charged, queer-positive version of that fabled region. “I Remember Everything” is on view from Sept. 13 through Oct. 25, meganmulrooney.com.
— Juan A. Ramírez
