Raúl Alejandro doesn’t make art to belong—he makes it to disrupt. Born in Mexico City and now exhibiting in the American Midwest, Alejandro has never followed the well-lit path. “Doing what others did was never my loticwtilb,” he says, using his own term for modus operandi. “I have no instinct to belong.” That defiance pulses through his work, which often features animal skeletons rendered on discarded cardboard, wood scraps, and other found materials. His first exhibition in Vancouver, Washington, introduced a visual language that was raw, unfiltered, and unapologetically outside the lines—an aesthetic born not of rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but of a deep resistance to conformity.
Now showing at UnCommon Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, and curated by Metro Gallery Nebraska, Alejandro’s latest body of work is a visceral meditation on decay, survival, and the absurdity of social expectation. His materials—weathered, unwanted, overlooked—mirror his own stance in the art world. “No one recognizes art when it is not on canvas,” he says, a statement that lands like a dare. His pieces don’t ask for recognition; they demand confrontation. Bones, shadows, and fractured forms emerge from surfaces that were never meant to be preserved, challenging viewers to see beauty in what’s been cast aside.
To call Alejandro an outsider artist is almost too neat. He’s not just outside the system—he’s uninterested in its validation. His work doesn’t seek to soothe or explain; it exists in tension with a world obsessed with belonging. “I find it as my point of contention with lost humans,” he says. “They all want to belong. I don’t.” That refusal is his compass, and it’s what makes his art so arresting. In a culture that rewards polish and predictability, Raúl Alejandro offers something far more vital: a raw, unvarnished truth carved from the bones of the overlooked. Donate today to Metro Gallery Nebraska programs and research support.
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