By Langston Hughes

“What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?”

The posthumous painting exhibit by Eder Alamilla that just closed Friday gives some inkling to his muscle-flexing potential and unbridled vitality. The exhibit, cryptically titled “Life’s A Bitch and Then You Die” is a kind of visual eulogy to Eder’s exuberant, exploratory foray into expressionistic painting. “Life’s a bitch” is a troubling, visually aggressive show that is surrounded by thousands of “what ifs”.  Troubling due to all those “what ifs”. Just too many damn “what ifs”.

  Eder Alamilla

A life interrupted. Talent deferred. Wicked, crazy concepts fraught with conjecture, hypotheticals and labyrinths of possibilities. Which way would his work go and how would it grow. No answers, just possibilities.

Before discussing the paintings in the exhibit a little backtracking into talent deferred is called for. Artists, musicians and poets like Kurt Cobain, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison all met their maker before fully developing their talent.

Kurt, the leader of the trailblazing “grunge” band Nirvana reportedly chewed down on the barrel of a 20 gauge shotgun and blew his brains out at 27. Some say it wasn’t suicide but love that killed him- Courtney Love that is, his girlfriend.

Kurt’s meteoric rise in the early 80s signaled the end of the superficiality of “glam-rock” and mindless disco-pop music. His music was spunky, sound based instead of visual based. His band Nirvana brought back nitty-gritty substance to the music scene. Nirvana sounded the death toll to the glittery nothingness of disco. Kurt worked hard on his art and played hard on his hedonism. His "Smells Like Teen Spirit" "was the anthem for Generation X. Kurt burned out and died before he really reached his stride. Kurt Cobain: February 20, 1967 – ca. April 5, 1994.

Graffiti painter Jean-Michel ODed on heroin at 27. He was born and raised in Brooklyn. His mother was Puerto Rican and his father was Haitian. Jean-Michel at the age of 17 initially gained notoriety for his outlaw-guerrilla art spray painted furtively on the walls of subway stations and the sides of buildings in lower Manhattan. His AKA for those graffiti inspired pieces was SAMO, (short for “same old shit”). Over night the outlaw paintings of the mysterious SAMO became a hit among the art-museum-gallery-collector crowd.

In a matter of months the brash, bohemian Jean-Michel was the darling of the New York art scene. He continued and expanded his graffiti imagery to focus on his Black and Hispanic identity. His art embraced a visual scruffiness though his content dealt explicitly in his identification with historical and modern Black personages and causes.

Jean-Michel’s star rose steadily; by the time he was 20 he was internationally celebrated. But along with all the praise and glory was the dangers of life in the fast lane of celebrity-dom: drugs, dames and dinero. Jean-Michel embraced all three with a vengeance. The drugs, specifically smack, became his downfall and begot his death. Jean-Michel Basquiat: December 22, 1960 - August 12, 1988.

Pyrotechnical guitar genius Jimi made it to 28 before suffocating on his own vomit due to too much ‘horse’.  Jimi is considered to be the king of electric guitars. The man every other musician is gauged by.

His early years were rough. At the age of 16, Jimi was thrown out of high school -apparently for holding the hand of a white girl in class.

So with education taken away Jimi decided to educate himself- on the guitar. He did not receive any formal music training; he was totally self-taught. His unique, unpredictable sound was strongly influenced by blues stylists such as B. B. King, and Muddy Waters, along with Rhythm & Blues guitarists like Curtis Mayfield. Jimi often mentioned his favorite musician to be jazz great Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He utilized feedback and distortion as jazz-like counter pointing tools to his more conventional melodies.

Jimi was not only an innovator, he was a dynamic showman. He was mesmerizing on stage. His performances were by turns sophisticated and barbaric; melodic and atonal. Guitar feedback as plaintive cry of pain and sorrow. 

  Jimi Hendrix

Jimi’s Cherokee and African heritage instilled his music with exotic rhythms and tribal beats. Jimi’s inquisitive, daring nature led to rampant experimentation in drugs; LSD, Meth, Coke and Heroin were ingested- sometimes more than one at a time. The talent shone bright as the drugs took their toll. Another genius bit the dust. James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix: November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970.

And poet, lead singer Jim Morrison for the 60s Acid Rock band “The Doors” died of a heart attack at the tender age of 27.  He was also an author of several volumes of poetry and a filmmaker. Jim founded the band “The Doors” in 1965 with his fellow UCLA film school student Ray Manzarek. The title of the band was borrowed from a line of William Blake’s poetry, "When the doors of perception are cleansed/Things will appear as they are, Infinite".

Jim and his band lived an unconventional, outsider life in the artist community near LA of Venice Beach. Bacchanals, orgies and violence induced by drug and alcohol paranoia were the constants in his life when he wasn’t creating classic tunes like “Light My Fire”, “LA Woman” and “Strange Days”.

Jim became something of a counter-culture icon due to the outrageousness of his live performances. Jim’s on stage singing and gyrations were so uninhibited and exposed so much that he was arrested several of times for public indecency and profanity. He called himself ‘the Lizard King’, and thought he could do anything. A fiery life and a truly bizarre death; a coronary at 27, come on. Jim Morrison: December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971.         

All lived life to the hilt; fast and furious. No holds barred. Roman candles that zoomed into the midnight sky, exploded in a blazing display of fire, pop, boom, kaboom and fell to earth.  They battled their demons and lost.  

One cannot view the Eder Alamilla painting exhibit without acknowledging the volatile last few months of his life. Viciously beat up at by the Princess Security. Disfigured from the attack. Then three days before he was to testify in court against the manager of the Princess, he was found in a car on Newtown Barracks with a bullet in the head. Some say suicide, others say homicide.

Eder’s paintings tell a story of verve and boundless energy contrasted by pessimism and loneliness. His art is simultaneously life affirming and morose. Eder’s seascapes are barren, tortured visions of a post apocalyptic no-man’s environment. Another painting that contains two figures in close proximity, (prelude to a kiss?) is painted in a macho cubist manner. The figures more resemble robots than flesh-n-blood people; robot love in the age of globalization.  Quite an edgy, cynical worldview for such a young man. Shades of Arthur Rimbaud’s “A Season in Hell”, (written when he was 19). 

  Eder Alamilla

What “Life’s A Bitch” amply shows is an artist of considerable talent working out his demons on canvas. Art as exorcism. The work is heartfelt to an extreme.

Eder exuberantly embraced painting. He experimented in styles, testing the waters of surrealism, cubism and expressionism. In some ways the exhibition can be viewed as a series of homages. Some pieces are inspired by the works of Julian Schnabel, some by Jean-Michel Basquiat, some by Antoni Tapies.

Then again, obviously painting for Eder was a catharsis, purging his emotional tensions. The exhibit shows so much potential, so much animation, so much potency, so many possibilities. A talent deferred. A life Interrupted. 

Oscar Wilde observed, “Life imitates art.”  What does art imitate?