FLA Gallery presents "Opioids: Express yourself"

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STAMFORD, CT -- Every day it’s in the news. Overdose deaths on the rise says CDC. Opioid makers paid millions to advocacy groups. And while lawmakers and White House executives make veiled campaign rally promises to change the tide of citizens lost to drugs, the stigma of addiction means that here on the ground, we’re not doing enough.

The Alvarez Gallery proudly presents a group show that aims to do more. Opioid: Express Yourself provides a platform for artists in a variety of mediums to confront the culprits of this epidemic. The gallery has given them the freedom to use its space and narrative as they choose. This is an important platform of expression for each artist to send a message about the opioid epidemic, how it has affected them personally, professionally, and as a community. Part protest art, part individual activism, this artist-led exhibition is seeking to strike change in ways similar to the social movements spreading across the country. From abstract representations to deeply personal stories, the artists of Opioid: Express Yourself navigate their own histories and how the epidemic has affected their lives. The stigma of drug addiction and its aftermath is still a taboo subject -- we applaud the addicts that have survived to become clean and sober, but the millions of individuals whose lives have been rendered to ruins by their drug use have been swept under the rug. We criminalize, persecute, condemn, and punish these individuals socially, economically, and politically. However, the individuals that caused the mass-marketing of opioids have museums, halls, performance arenas, and universities honoring their names. They are lauded for their generosity while we conveniently ignore the broken homes and broken lives that their wealth is built upon. This group of artists is saying “no more.” In Opioid: Express Yourself, the Gallery provides artists a platform to put forward investigative work through performance, painting, sculpture, and activism. The exhibition opens at the Alvarez Gallery on Saturday, June 22nd, 2018, and runs until July 30th, 2018. An opening on June 22 will run from 5 to 8pm.

For more information contact the gallery at info@alvarezgallery.com, 888-861-6791. Artists Participating Nathan Lewis, Clinton Deckert, Matthew Paul Cleary, Ben Quesnel, Antuan Rodriguez, Lee Tal, Domenic Esposito, John J. Bedoya, and others.