mel rosas at elaine jacob gallery
Foreign Intimacies
“My work is an ongoing investigation of Latin America and Latin American culture. Half-Panamanian and half-North American, my identity is split, wrestling with two cultures and two languages. As a young man, I spoke English and often dreamed in Spanish. Travels to Latin America have provided the basis for my art by informing dreams and exploring subject-matter that is both foreign and familiar. Subsequently, my paintings are not documentations of specific places or events, but rather landscapes of memory, exploring a line between dream and wake time and striving for a balance between the sublime and the melancholy.” –Mel Rosas
Flawlessly executed perspective complemented with fastidious detail like the rippled edge of a tin roof allows complete immersion into this palpable environment. El macho se fue’s impasto creates mortared grooves between bricks and topographical decay in the aging wall and curbside. The smartly dressed figure activates the scene.
Ordinary settings are rendered extraordinary through compositional framing, palette and an element of motion preventing statis. Rolling waves are mirrored in a stylized image applied to the paneled cerulean building. A strong canary stripe positioned off center separates fantasy from reality.
A nondescript stage hosts a transient moment of beauty in the swirl of the dancer’s diaphanous skirt. The black, starless sky and heavy shadow cast seeds of vanitas, the futility of vanity and pleasure which pass into memory as quickly as they appear.
The Day of the Panther offers an opportunity to step through pocked, graffitied walls trussed with bent framework long abandoned by its awning into lush landscaping. Paradise is disrupted by utility poles and a superstitious warning that crosses the beckoning path.
Unless you are of Native American descent, you or your ancestors immigrated—or were forcibly transported—from another country ferrying its culture along with other necessary accoutrement to set up a new life. It’s the blend of cultures and ideas that make the US fertile ground for innovation and growth as much as it fosters cavernous division. Integration, as these paintings blend Latin and American characteristics, is the key to each citizen’s unalienable right to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
On view through June 2 at Elaine Jacob Gallery 147 Art Building WSU Detroit
*images are mine. Dimensions were not provided. I’ll estimate these around 40x50ish and 40x40ish, which I’m 100% sure are incorrect but gives a sense of scale. No idea why galleries regularly choose to omit dimensions when they’re critical to full comprehension and enjoyment of any piece. I guess exact measurements don’t matter as much if you’re standing in front of the work. Promotes attendance?
direct quote from gallery materials
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