Scope BLN

presents

 

SHORTHAND

SOLO EXHIBITION BY AUSTIN ALPHONSE

 

May 21 – June 19, 2026

Opening: Thursday, May 21 at 06:00 PM

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Shorthand presents the preparatory material behind Austin Alphonse’s painting practice. Known for large-scale figurative oil paintings that examine American masculinity, class identity, and the mythologization of working-class life, Alphonse builds his images through an extended process of drawing, writing, collecting, photographing, collaging and careful revision.

This exhibition brings together materials from the artists studio that typically remain unseen: thumbnail sketches, compositional studies, preparatory drawings, fragments of writing, and loose studio notes. These works trace the movement from first impulse to final image, revealing how figures, symbols, and scenes are tested before entering the slower, more methodical language of paint.

For Alphonse, drawing has long functioned as an outlet for thought: the most immediate way to translate an idea into physical form. Many of the sketches included in Shorthand were made in transit — on planes, trains, and buses, or while drinking coffee (or on occasion stronger beverages). They often begin as quick attempts to catch hold of an image before it disappears, “notes to self”. In this sense, they are often direct, practical, and occasionally a bit unruly.

The works also reveal the ordinary conditions through which paintings are made. Some drawings become scrap paper, layered with notes, measurements, phone numbers, to-do lists etc.. The same sheet might hold a figure study, a compositional adjustment, and the address of the nearest art store. In this way, the work finished work is demystified, brought back from the realm of the ethereal into the here and now.