It was a sweltering mid-morning in Miami last month, and Esaí Alfredo was surrounded by his new series of queer nightscape fantasias. The oil paintings, redolent of romance and longing, are crammed with a multitude of what the 27-year-old artist is geeked on: ’70s sci-fi movie storyboards and pulp novel covers, The Wizard of Oz, horror films, TV adventure shows. The list goes on and on.

“I would describe it as ‘magical realism,’” he said of his artwork. “It’s all set in real life, but there’s fantastical elements.”

Alfredo was at his gallery, Spinello Projects, in the Allapattah district. The series, “Roads to the Nocturnal World,” was staged like an exhibition in an upstairs gallery but it was hung so it could be photographed for its next stop. With his solo booth at this week’s Armory Show, chances are Alfredo will echo the success he garnered at 2023’s Art Basel Miami Beach.

Esaí Alfredo, El Camino Carmesí / The Crimson Path (2024). Courtesy of Spinello Projects.

Last year, Spinello Projects devoted its booth to Alfredo for his debut art fair. “I never have any confidence,” Alfredo said. “I knew I wasn’t gonna sell anything.” The entire booth sold out within the first hour of the VIP preview. Alfredo’s indigo-hued visions balanced intimacy with fantasy, and a clear queer narrative. They stood out and struck a nerve with collectors eager to discover the next gay figurative painter with Louis Fratino-crossover potential. But Alfredo will have to narrow down the new paintings, many large scale, for his New York outing: he can bring only six to Armory.

One subject that repeatedly appears in the works bears striking similarities to the diminutive artist himself. The eerie standout, The Crimson Path (2024), resembles a scene from another planet and depicts its protagonist standing on a butte (wearing basically the same outfit Alfredo is wearing when we speak), gazing out at a pulsating neon river. I ask if it’s his avatar. “It’s me,” Alfredo said hesitatingly, “but it’s me playing a character. You know, it’s me, but it’s not.”

Esaí Alfredo, El Estallido Detras De La Antena / The Blast Behind The Antenna (2023). Courtesy of Spinello Projects.

Alfredo specializes in conjuring scenes that combine film stills for Hollywood blockbusters (recast with young, queer Latinx players) and imagined films with intimate slices of life. In The Blast Behind the Antenna (2023), two young men are captured mid-embrace in the twilight. It’s unclear if they’re in the midst of an alien invasion or just technical difficulties. What looks like a green laser is piercing a cloud in the background. The duo reappears in The Kiss Before The Light (2024), their lips just about to touch. Did they sneak out for a hookup or are they saying goodbye to civilization? It’s this mystery that’s part of the majesty of Alfredo’s work.

The artist hails from the tiny town of Yabucoa in Puerto Rico; it is surrounded by hills on three sides, and the other faces the sea. “There’s always a horizon line in my paintings,” Alfredo said. Yabucoa’s enchanting scenic locales often factor into his work when he’s not inventing other worlds entirely. Alfredo moved to Miami full-time in 2023.

“I didn’t notice it at first,” he said, “but I started putting in all these neon colors. That’s very Miami, especially at night. I think unconsciously I incorporated that in my paintings.” But his first mainland experience was studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia.

Esaí Alfredo, El Beso Antes De La Luz / The Kiss Before The Light (2024). Courtesy of Spinello Projects.

Alfredo became affiliated with his gallery when founder Anthony Spinello, interested in acquiring a piece, contacted him on Instagram. This led to Alfredo decamping to Miami for a residency and a 2022 solo exhibition at Spinello, “Nightfall,” based on the 1941 Isaac Asimov science fiction short story.

“It’s about this fictitious planet that’s always in daylight,” Alfredo explained, “and there’s an eclipse and everyone sees the stars for the first time. So, they set the city on fire because they don’t know what darkness is. I took that story and made it happen in Puerto Rico and I made the main characters young gay boys meeting each other, kind of like Titanic, you know how they took the story and placed a romantic story on top of it.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami acquired a painting from this show; the Pérez Art Museum Miami just acquired 2023’s The Emerald Comet.

Esaí Alfredo, El Cometa Esmeralda/ The Emerald Comet (2023). Courtesy of Pérez Art Museum Miami.

This residency and show marked a creative turning point. It was the first time he moved from gay subtext to distinctly gay content. A kiss turned out to be a breakthrough.

“I would have hints of queerness in my paintings, but not very obvious,” he said. “I remember telling Anthony, ‘Oh my God, I’m so nervous when my family sees the painting.’ and he was like, ‘You’re gonna do fine.’ I’m glad that happened, ’cause then I was like, ‘I feel great. People liked it.’”

Esaí Alfredo. Photo: Elliot Jiminez. Courtesy of Spinello Projects.

Alfredo didn’t realize he was holding back. “I think growing up religious affected that,” he said. “I felt guilty at some point in life painting stuff like that. So, I would just do landscapes and a lot of self-portraits. I still do self-portraits, but it’s not how my paintings are self-portraits now. I feel like I was doing them because I was trying to say something to people. Self-portrait painting is like a diary for most artists, so they’re telling how they’re feeling. But then I did that painting, and I felt so comfortable, so there was nothing to hide anymore.”

Transgressive or explicit is certainly not Alfredo’s vibe; an underlying sweetness and naivete is a throughline in his work. He motioned to one of the new paintings and said, “Even the characters there, they’re not kissing, they’re about to. There is tension. I’m not giving you everything.”