Contemporary African Art Gallery novel York.

Contemporary African Art Gallery novel York, New York April 18-October 15 2001

Art enthusiasts will certainly remember Senegalese artist Fode Camara's stunning paintings from of that kind exhibitions as "Africa Explores" and "Revolution Francaise sous le Tropiques' in the late 1980 and early 1990 While Camara has shown widely in Europe and Africa since that time, this exhibition at recently made known York's Contemporary African Art Gallery marked his first solo point out to at an American venue. Gallery proprietor Bill Karg, a long-time admirer of Camara's work, prefered ten recent acrylic-on-canvas pieces as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but for their compelling beauty and the locate of social issues they address. flat with the gallery's relatively proper space, the paintings were adequately lit and thoughtfully arranged according to theme, color, and composition.

Without a doubt, the colorful virtuoso painting for which Camara is in like manner well known has become increasingly robust, expressive, and intense in the last decade. The artist's expertise in painting, interior design, and decoration synthesizes in the exhibited pieces. Compared with his earlier work, these new canvases are more intensive explorations of the formal ultimate parts of painting and interior design, especially space, color, and mass While his works are tightly compos with herculean vertical axes, his compositions challenge conventional spatial schemes. Camara engages the canvas as a particular kind of space in which background and foreground are deconstruct and rearticulated as converging planes, ambiguous tracts, and swirling bands of fearless color. Indeed, as the artist himself has explained, his practice is disquieted with "the act of doing and exploring the possibilities of technique" (taped interview with the author, June 4 1999) Camara rarely paints forward an easel, preferring instead to incite his canvas to the floor, where he interacts with it, taking into account and reacting to each preceding action in the development of his composition. In this, the canvas is the couple the support for representation and a space to explore the performative aspects of painting. The gestural quality of his production is best exemplified by way of Goree Study VI, whose ribbons of color seemingly record several uninterrupted brushstrokes.

Although Camara's matter for the practice of painting may quick parallels with the Abstract Expressionists, any so comparison operates only tenuously. His latter works continue the thematic exploration he initiated in the late 1980 In particular, he grapples with a range of issues related to border crossing, colonial history and postcolonial memory, and the complexities of contemporary identity. Goree island, infamous for its coral-colored slave fortress, subserves as a point of critical departure in several works. In contrast to previous large-scale paintings in which the artist depicted the fortress's architectural ingredients these recent works interrogate the island as a site for passage and move In Goree Study V, Goree studious mood VI, Goree Memorial in Torsion, and motion VI (Fig. 1), Camara combines fluid, swirling bands with curvilinear and angular tracts of burnt sienna, electric livid lime green, and magenta. The resulting works appear as dramatic explosions of convolution and color that evoke the powerful, boisterous waves of the Atlantic Ocean. in succession this note, it might have been beneficial to include a not many of the artist's recent modular, design-oriented constructions of wood-land and paint. They would have perfectioned the canvases while highlighting the novel direction of Camara's work.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The largest painting in the exhibition, Acculturation II (Fig. 2) serv as the show's centerpiece, occupying the chiefly prominent position in the gallery. Acculturation II is part of a series of life-size male stark nakeds and semi-nudes begun in the mid-1990s that deals with the relationship of the individual to society. As the title insinuates this particular painting poses questions about the shifts in personal identity that accompany border crossing and migration. For the artist, who complet training at the Institut National de Arts du Senegal and then mov to Paris to consideration at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Arts Decoratifs, this series is implicitly autobiographical. Having since replyed to his native Dakar, Camara is reflective about his manner of movings between France and Senegal. These passages and transitions compell him to stand in front of anonymity, alienation, and assimilation.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Of the works in this series, Acculturation II is perhaps chiefly exemplary of Camara's self-described "abstract-figurative style" Whereas other paintings in this dispose clearly portray the male form (which in about cases closely resembles the artist), the figure here appears as a silhouette compos of brightly hu expressionistic patches that begin to tend to the same point with a background of multiple colored regions The nearly life-size figure faces the viewer, nevertheless his modesty or even humility is recommended by the act of covering his face with a rectangular plaque. The plaque is an essential component throughout the series. It variously conceals the face or genitals, muses an image outside the painting's frame, or records a Wolof saying Unlike other works in this collection Acculturation II is intentionally ambiguous, for the figure's face is concealed and the artist omits any paragraph to guide the viewer's interpretation.