Los Angeles, CA

A child of artist parents, Alvaro Naddeo’s cosmopolitan upbringing—which saw his family moving from São Paulo to Lima, followed by New York, and eventually to the artist’s current home of Los Angeles—shaped a keen awareness of the problems inherent in contemporary urban life. While his work occupies itself with issues of waste, overconsumption, and social inequality, Naddeo handles this heavy subject matter with a light touch. This balanced approach is evident in the artwork for this volume, which optimistically imagines a new life for the discarded objects of modern city life. The critique of capitalist waste is evident in the rendering of an abandoned hotdog cart repurposed as a jalopy, but the inherent whimsy of such an object leavens the proceedings with a layer of absurd humor. Naddeo’s keen observations are gleaned partially from a lifetime of participation in the marketplace. After 20 years in the advertising world exercising his visual skills as an Art Director, Naddeo rejected his longtime commercial occupation in favor of an artistic practice as a painter, a long-held childhood ambition finally realized.