Dual Debuts
Alberto Vasquez and Axel Duarte
June and July 2025

Alberto Vazquez is a 25-year-old self-taught photographer, videographer, and video editor based in Salinas, California. Working under the name 2driot, his work blends moody, cinematic tones with emotional depth—capturing the overlooked, the quiet, and the in-between. Alberto’s photography is grounded in personal experience and intuition rather than formal training. Whether he’s documenting raw city textures, soft light across landscapes, or gritty glimpses of everyday life, his work evokes emotion first and explanation second.

Outside of his personal projects, he has worked professionally across automotive photography, event coverage, and visual storytelling, creating content that’s as intentional as it is impactful. His passion lies in giving stillness a voice—using photography not just as an art form, but as a form of connection. All works on display are available for purchase—feel free to reach out if something speaks to you.

Axel Duarte is a twenty-four-year-old Mexican-American artist born and raised in Salinas, California. Rooted in abstraction, his work channels a distinct visual language shaped by personal intuition, instinct, and a process guided by material and method. While primarily working with oil paints on canvas, he approaches his practice fluidly, embracing multiple mediums and modes of expression.

With a background in the Humanities from San José State University, Duarte brings a thoughtful, interdisciplinary lens to his creative process — one shaped by six years of academic exploration into the human condition, identity, culture and aesthetics. His education informs not only the content of his work but the way he navigates critique, insight, and expression.

Duarte sees art as a space for radical expression, where personal vision takes shape without constraint. His current body of work, to be featured in #DualDebuts at UUCMP, explores the symbolic, and sometimes surreal edges of self-expression through richly layered, abstract compositions.