Amid a spread of light sushi bites and refreshments, visitors poured into the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery for a new exhibition opening Wednesday evening. Alex Carmen, a senior majoring in fine arts, celebrated his first solo show in Los Angeles. Carmen is a recipient of the Ruth Weisberg Prize for Drawing, which supported this exhibition.

The prestigious honor is awarded to one outstanding undergraduate student chosen after an annual competition in the Roski School of Art and Design. Through a $6,500 award, Roski provides the opportunity for the research, development, production and exhibition of a creative project.

The awarded student also collaborates with a faculty mentor who advises them from conception to execution. Keith Mayerson, a professor of art, provided Carmen that guidance. Mayerson first witnessed Carmen’s talent in his “Drawing for Art and Design” class.

“[Carmen] had so much acumen and talent and creative ambition [and] knew a lot about the contemporary art world,” Mayerson said. “I’ve mentored him for this show, [and I] couldn’t be more proud of him.”

Mayerson applauded Carmen’s performance as a student and an artist in the community.

“You got to put in the work and have the ambition and the drive to make things that are meaningful to keep making it,” Mayerson said. “Then, you have to be able to get out of your studio and let people know that you exist, because lightning very seldom hits your laboratory. And [lastly], when you’re out on the road, you’ve got to be a nice person … Alex is all three of these things.”

Mayerson praised Carmen for his perseverance and diligence.

“He has his own studio Downtown. He and his friends have curated shows that have gotten hundreds of people to the opening and closings with band performances at different venues,” Mayerson said. “He’s part of a generation in L.A. of amazing young artists doing great things, who are really challenging themselves and creating a voice … Alex is a leader.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Carmen is an L.A.-based multidisciplinary artist and designer. His work explores the interconnected nature between drawing, painting, video, and digital art and examines relationships between bodies, consciousness, the postmodern age and reality.

“I’ve been developing … [this body of work] for the past two years that primarily had to do with my interest in the way technology has intervened with the way that we exist as people, how it changes the way we talk to other people, how we intake information, how we traverse the land,” Carmen said. “Basically, I’m concerned with the way that technology has influenced reality.”

Carmen also drew inspiration from his hometown and the air of politics surrounding the city.

“My family’s involved in politics; I’ve been raised around it my whole life,” Carmen said. “In the way that technology alters our perception of reality, I was interested in the way power structures do the same and how they actually could utilize technology to change the way that we perceive ourselves in the world … I started thinking about the way that it influences me individually as a person.”

The exhibition spanned several mediums, from sculpture to video, which is characteristic of Carmen’s work. This show mainly consists of a series of airbrushed acrylic pieces depicting abstracted and overlapped male bodies while also weaving in references from popular culture. One piece, for example, features a scene from “South Park” that in itself builds upon iconic motifs of art history.

“I really liked [a] ‘South Park’ painting … because it’s sort of a play on the Madonna-and-child or mother-and-child relationship in art, media tradition,” Carmen said. “It’s a nice representation of this piece of technology that’s used maliciously to addict people.”

Many faculty members, peers, friends and family showed their support for Carmen at the show, including Robin Forsyth, who knew him from high school.

“I loved it. It was very eerie. It was like walking into the haze of the unheimlich realm,” Forsyth said. “I really liked the Tony Soprano one that has the sort of barely legible black-on-black writing … [because] I have a philosophical interest in exscription: writing that has been erased or effaced.”

“Trees with Holes in Them” is on view from March 21 to April 3, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the ground floor of Watt Hall.