In his more recent works, Radhames Mejia reveals a
new aesthetic relationship. The plasticity of the materials, dense,
faithful and febrile emits vibrations that surge forth like an
unending echo of a cry, from the times of Antiquity. A cry, which is
all the more prolonged and subtle as the seeing eye is missing. Absent
and useless before an omnipresent sensuality.
The aesthetic edifice of this painter is born of
thick rounded forms whose enigma could but lead to their being split
open, separated. Today Mejia imposes nuances. Nothing is left to
hazard and even the smallest section is delicately limited. What in
the past was a fetal mass or lunar brightness has become object or
animal, to the extent of pressing the highest degree of metamorphosis
into service, unfolded in careful sequences, so that the imaginary
becomes one with the creative act.
In a succession of ensembles his evolutive and synchronized geometries
give form to the work and the mass in movement engenders the provisory
shape. The roundness of the bird already announces the stretching of
the fish. The instantaneous folding of the snail flattens out into
salamander or scorpion: animated shapes moving surely forward to
begetting the being. The being, still alive and blind, breathing on a
red, fuchsia, orange, yellow or blue background, bright colours of
life and the light in a world where shadow threatens truth.
Mejia a language of plasticity and a technique in which the play of
light softens the violence with copper, gold and silver pigments which
can better project the reflection of the paint on the canvas. His work
unfolds like a journey, which leads us from the closed to the open,
from the reduced to the open, from the reduced to the enlarged. All
the shapes undergo a transformation, which becomes progressively
clearer, much in the way a silent movie does when speech is found in
the new version. The masses move like a procession of signs, becoming
stems, fingers, adolescent penises on the roadway of wonder and
amazement. The rounded shapes move towards coherency, the imperfect
circle becoming the shell of a turtle and the apple, strangled in its
mutation into the pear, become, without emphasis, a mask, a hood, and
the face of the painter himself.
It is a question of becoming, the dynamic of this artist who suggests
the being that dwells in him and haunts him without ever revealing
itself because it is not yet ready to be born: the triangle skull
reigns and waits above organic elements. The stiff open hand hopes to
join itself to the limb. More and more a triangle wanders, clearly
outlined with slightly dotted lines, but kept within the space. Mejia
builds up his sequences on a white background where a multitude of
chaotic squares and rectangles enclose the subject, leaves or flowers,
which represent precious sap. This ensemble of blended ensembles
begets the earth in space of heaped bones in which simmers all
fertility. This is portrayed simply by some figurative touches as if
we were between dream and reality. The organic moistness of
fecundation is experienced in an intimate temperature of warm haunting
colours.
All this working of materials, this mixing, this blending this
emanation of substances, this profusion of chromatic sensuality, the
result of all this experimentation, can only lead to ecstasy. Of this
symbiosis the form will at last assume the mark of the human being
until, finally, the artist becomes the master of his creation. Mejia
has lived for several millennia in this magic alcove, like an Assyrian
sage, a priest of Mesopotamia, but also like an untiring Ulysses, a
visionary of space.
To arrive at the decomposition and the reassembly of ensembles, Mejia
has decided to reconstitute the subject. Man and woman appear on the
stage of life, ambiguous figures taking on the appearance of Mejia,
the sex carefully kept within the pubic triangle, tabernacle of secret
pleasures. The artist continues his painting with a methodical
awareness full of sensual delight and elements that come to add
themselves to the original. Out of the sign, the code and the shape,
the subject emerges, always the same becoming the other, softly,
slowly in a long process in which the unconscious takes over from
memory.
This artist, a native of the Dominican Republic, has his rightful
place in a contemporary art. If there is a world, then the “world” of
Rahdames Mejia is certainly part of it. Some write or say of Mejia
that he is a repository of primitive art, African and figurative art.
Taking into consideration references which are always facile and
dangerous, his works certainly do confirm that the human being is heir
to a past and future. The artist is well embarked along the universal
way; so the reference can only suggest that he is part of the inspired
adventure of those beings that are imbued by the obsession to create.
The twentieth century, privileged ground for all the audacities of
contemporary and experimental art, has honoured us with a new
generation of painters who come from elsewhere, charged with words,
noises, sounds, lights, pains and dreams. They constitute no school,
nor do they publish treatises, but remain genuine and honest, bearers
of a legend, a tale, but also of a history – their own, ever ready to
move, to change, to answer the call, and, like their own lives
constantly on the move, in search of mystery and secrets.
This elsewhere is more distant than a simple geographical position,
further off than a static landmark. An elsewhere of the unconscious,
revealing itself little by little, and thus engendering the endless
voyage. The intimate voyage of constantly confronted sensations and
emotions, for the encounter, the shock of impact, are inevitable. It
is from just such experience that the work of art is born, art bearing
even more the mark of genius. Did Gris, Picasso, Braque, and so many
others, who came from elsewhere, not leave their mark on this century
? The work of Radhames Mejia is profoundly essential in this stirring
up of our senses, but also for all that it implies of life and energy,
precisely in its capacity to shake up and provoke the abstract in all
that it retains of death and inertia. The essential dynamic in the
works of Radhames Mejia is already a necessary part in the Renaissance
of contemporary art.
FERNANDO UREÑA RIB
RADHAMES MEJIA
BIOGRAPHY
Born 1960, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
EDUCATION
1984 -1986 L’école Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris,
Paris, France
1974 - 1979 Escuela de Bellas Artes, Santo Domingo, Dominican
Republic
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2001 Galeria Lyle O. Reitzel Arte Contemporaneo, Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic
2000 Museo de las Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico
2000 Galerie Demanie-Fardel, Sanary-sur-Mer, France
1999 "Série Masque-mas-cara," Galerie Fardel, Le Touquet, France
1999 "Mac 2000," Espace Eiffel-Branly, Paris, France
1997 Galerie Fardel, Le Touquet, France
1997 "Siluetas Ancestrales," Museo de Arte Moderno, Santo
Domingo, Dominican Republic
1994 Galerie Le Soleil Bleu, Versailles, France
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2000 "The International Biennial Print & Drawings Exhibition",
Taipei, Taiwan
1997 "109 Biennale," Espace Eiffel-Branly, Paris, France
1997 "Presencia africana en la cultura dominicana," Centro
Cultural Espanol, Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic
1997 "Transafrican Art," Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida
1996 "Istanbul Art Fair," Istanbul, Turkey
1994 Galerie Got, Paris et Barbizon, France
1994 "Salon d’Art Contemporain," Dammarie-les-Lys, France
1994 "L‚Art s‚affiche (event sponsored by Avenir and Objective
Art)," Paris, France
1994 "Salon d‚Art Contemporain «Itinéraires»," Levallois-Perret,
France
1993 "Triennale des Amériques," Maubeuge, France
1991 "XIII Biennale Méditerranéenne d’Art Contemporain," Nice,
France
SELECTED AWARDS, GRANTS AND HONORS
1998 Lauréat au concours international d’Art Contemporain
organisé par Michelin à l’occasion du centenaire du Bibendum
1994 Honorable Mention, Concours Salon d’Art Contemporain,
Dammarie-les-Lys, France
1991 Mention d‚Honneur, Concours Fortabat, Maison de l’Amérique
Latine, Paris, France
1991 1er Prix XIIIème Biennale Méditerranéenne d’Art
Contemporain, Nice, France
1989 1er Prix de Lithographie, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de
Paris, France
1981 1er Prix de Dessin, Premio E. Leon Jimenez, Dominican
Republic |
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