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5/12/2009

Strange Intersections

Five Myles, New York

The work in this exhibition by the Haitian born artist Engels shows an artist’s sure eye for details that, when combined on a canvas or a piece of plywood, become a unit. These solid constructions have the authority of a finished work; they none-the-less reveal the process of how they came to be this way. For Engels they resemble a journey, still ongoing and not afraid of detours.

Engels describes his work as abstract figuration or modern spiritual. He often includes photographs in his collages, that elegantly contrast with the ephemeral strokes of a brush dipped in paint – the artist’s fascination with a kind of synthesis of the seen and the unseen – for him the underlying spirituality in modernism. Engels’ mastery of form, textures, colors, objects and built environments within the work, reveals his sense of the sacred found in ordinary things, brought out by provocative juxtapositions.

The sculpture Engels 09, a pair of worn-out jeans, covered with dried paint, its legs filled with stuffing and crumpled into a pair of shoes, is tightly packed into a wooden frame, like a packing case. An unnerving work that conjures up an image of bondage, of packaged humanity. By standing it on one of his constructed works that combines an ornate picture frame with a piece of mirror, the work is freed of its enslaved isolation and becomes an ode to painting.

Engels’ art takes its strength from his belief in the transcending power of art over the more mundane and material aspects of our lives. In her essay "The Aesthetics of Silence", Susan Sontag wrote that, "in the modern era, one of the most active metaphors for the spiritual project is ‘art,’" and "the newer myth about art, derived from a post-psychological conception of the consciousness, installs within the activity of art many of the paradoxes involved in attaining an absolute state of being, described by the great religious mystics." Through his work, Engels claims this space of the spiritual for his own realm.

Image: Somewhere in Japan (detail), oil on canvas, 2009

Opening Reception: Sunday, December 6, 4 – 7 p.m.

FiveMyles
558 St. Johns Place Brooklyn, NY 11238
Gallery hours: Thur, Fri, Sat, Sun, 1 - 6 p.m. or by appointment: 718-783-4438

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