Lester is such a prolific and varied artist, it’s hard to know where to begin. Each piece here is so different, and the other works of his that i have looked at are even more so. But what is readily apparent is his proficiency: there is no doubt this guy has a good grasp of the tools of his chosen medium. But that is merely stating the obvious, what want to analyse is: what drew me to these three pieces in particular?

It started with Beach Fronts, which i came across on the Zed website. In this short video our concern with the ins and outs of perception is readily apparent. The American artist and father of light and space art Robert Irwin once said that what defines art from other disciplines is its concern with aesthetics. And what is aesthetics other than an investigation of how we perceive? It was when he began to really look at his paintings and how they appeared even within the rigid environment of his studio that Irwin began to see that the painting was as much outside the frame as it was inside – in fact, it could easily be argued that it resided outside of more than within itself.

Beach Fronts subverts a casual view of the beach, and then subverts even the new view that one quickly assumes. A simple stretch of sand and snow fence fractures and abstracts, forcing one to no longer gaze passively “out,” but rather follow that gaze back to its source; leaving one with an empty hand, but much fuller for the journey.

Beneath the veneer of a simple visual documentary free of narration, Weavers too reveals the assumptions we make as we move through our everyday world. There behind the façade of a typical suburban home in the Philippines, an entire cultural history is enacted complete with the economic and class issues that we hadn’t dared to confront until presented with the common view from the street. Here Alonso has turned the typical documentary on its head and in the process raised a whole series of questions and enigmas, leaving us dangling with our own doubt.

And then there are those insects crawling across that window sill, the snow falling - and whatever is that black shape which proceeds down the snow-covered walkway in the background? What kind of insect prospers so well in the dead of winter? Has the filmmaker perhaps spliced the foreground together with an incongruous backdrop? Or is the answer simply banal? But sure enough, once again one has been forced from the comfort zone of assumed perceptions, and the commonplace restored to a source of endless fascination.

Michael Tweed