Jorge Alegría’s Heaven opened at the Rockport Center for the Arts’ Garden Gallery on August sixth, with a closing on the third of September. The artist has been living in Corpus Christi for many years and although he’s flirted with accredited institutions, he’s never felt like he needed a degree to bolster his reputation. The merits of Alegría’s work  are readily visible through the fine craft of draftsmanship and wild imagination rooted in science fiction. The selection of drawings presented in this exhibition is only a small part of Heaven a large, ever evolving, narrative that began 23 years ago.

The larger narrative is broken up into four parts: The war of the Angels, The War of the Beasts, The war of the Faerie and The war of Men. That ordering of chapters also orients the hierarchy of beings in Alegría’s science fiction phantasm. The story is essentially that of creation, however very faraway in time, and completely incongruous with our typical type casting of the four character sets Alegría expounds upon. Alegría describes his works as being very similar to concept art for movies and video games save for the fact that his works serve no greater end. His end it would seem is ever becoming.

The purport of science fiction deliciously evident in Alegría’s fine graphite drawings is kindred to Blade Runner, Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien and Dune. Though the drawings are small in scale their scope is so large as to almost blind comprehension. They are delicate and finely tooled, Alegría making thorough use of every implement available to the practice of rendering in graphite.

According to Alegría the story is centered around the all powerful Angels who during their War repopulate a wide universe with men, beast and faerie. The drawings feature wrathful angels such as Onnumec whose appearance is wrathful verging on demonic. The Angels control everything, transporting humans aboard slave ships.

Through a lens of epic saga with biblical bent Alegría examines our societal systems through alien narrative. The vastness of our own existence is repopulated through diverse character types, power mongers, terrorists, ships and more ships, and ethereal landscapes populated with hopeful light just out of reach. In his drawings one feels the poetic physicality of human emotion under innumerable conditions, and the touch of a world generating our problems in celestial imaginations untold. Angels become grievous slavers wielding magic wrath across lightyears, Nymphs proposes a hopeful duo not unlike Sam and Frodo, Robo recalls Geiger with independent language, while Viator is blissfully enchanting whispering of escape.

Alegría’s Heaven would seem a life’s work that began in childhood fascinations with ant farms and nature. During our interview Alegría joked that he “…always made other kids pick up the bugs,” and this sensibility of command carries over into the work I think wherein worlds are bent with illustrative will in examination of our own impossibly oppressive hegemonies.

Alegría’s is an oeuvre that is continually evolving episodically. I for one will be watching his output with great fascination so long as he lives.

–Jack Wood