Many Trinidadians know the elements of a good river lime with the river, of course, being central to that.
Trinidad and Tobago artist Che Lovelace’s latest exhibition, Che Lovelace: Bathers, takes an expository look at bodies of water and TT people’s interaction with it.
[caption id="attachment_1004589" align="alignnone" width="855"] Worshippers by Che Lovelace. - Courtesy Brendan Delzin[/caption]
It will run from March 9-April 15 at the Nicola Vassell Gallery, Tenth Avenue, New York. Lovelace’s 14-piece exhibition carries titles such as Worshippers, showing figures dressed in Baptist-like clothing holding hands in a river. Another is called River Scene which shows bodies involved in different activities in the water.
Other pieces are titled after popular activities done by water and/or popular bodies of water such as Beach Dancers, Covigne Pool and Large Broadwalk Bathers. Many of them are done with acrylic and dry pigment.
A bio about Lovelace on the gallery’s website says he is “an unabashed painter of the flora, fauna, figures, landscapes and rituals of the Caribbean.”
“Lovelace likens his material and formal interventions–such as cleaving the canvas into quadrants and dissecting the picture plane into cubist constituents–to exploring Caribbean selfhood as an integration of antecedents and transforming simplicity into wonder.”
[caption id="attachment_1004590" align="alignnone" width="853"] Figure with Falling Water. - Courtesy Brendan Delzin[/caption]
A press release about the exhibition said, “Meditating on famed depictions of bathers throughout the art historical canon, Lovelace was particularly fascinated by artists who were lesser known for the subject. One such, Edvard Munch, rendered bathers with energy and vitalism, a philosophy germinated from Aristotelian times that emphasised the vital forces of nature and good health. Framing this immemorial trope in the specificity of his own culture, Lovelace celebrates the bather as an intrinsic figure of the Trinidadian vernacular.”
On his Facebook page Lovelace said, “Very, very excited! My first full-scale New York gallery exhibition opens one week from now on Thursday 9th March at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea.
“The exhibition brings together paintings, some of which I’ve been working on for several years, all focused around the body and water.
“Our relationship with water…the sea, rivers etc. here in the Caribbean is a complex one, and I have tried to translate through my own experiences what that relationship feels and looks like.”
The gallery described the exhibition as a “series of paintings chronicling the artist’s exploration of the body in and around water.”
It added, “With an expressionistic hand, Lovelace weaves stories of life, freedom, and post-colonialism in his native Trinidad, into a tapestry of abstracted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits.”
Lovelace began working with Jamaican-born gallerist Nicola Vassell in 2021. Vassell opened the gallery in 2021 but has worked in the art world for about two decades.
