{"id":1866,"date":"2014-04-02T17:47:54","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T21:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/~reviewing\/?page_id=1866"},"modified":"2014-04-02T17:50:07","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T21:50:07","slug":"duval-carrie-offers-magical-realism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reviewing\/?page_id=1866","title":{"rendered":"Duval-Carri\u00e9 presents magical realism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted April 2, 2014<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Roxana Maza<\/p>\n

Marie Antoinette and Christopher Columbus join Batman, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, and others, on a boat as they row toward new land. Ready to pollute the natural paradise with western industrialization, these are some ways Edouard Duval-Carri\u00e9\u2019s sense of magical realism is executed in \u201cImagined Landscapes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edouard Duval-Carri\u00e9 is a 59-year-old Haitian-born, Miami-based artist, sculptor, painter and curator.<\/p>\n

He studied abroad in Montr\u00e9al, Canada, and in France, and his works have been featured in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, France, Mexico and in several U.S. states.<\/p>\n

His \u201cImagined Landscapes\u201d exhibition will be featured at the P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami from March 13 to Aug. 31. PAMM\u2019s upcoming exhibition will honor more Caribbean artists, \u201cCaribbean: Crossroads of the World,\u201d opening in April this year and will feature 180 works.<\/p>\n

Duval-Carri\u00e9 invokes a sense of awe with his \u201cImagined Landscapes\u201d large-scale works, which are based in the Caribbean, set in dark palates heavily accented with black and silver glitter with splashes of bold colors and make references to Haiti\u2019s Voodooist practices and religion.<\/p>\n

The 11 paintings featured at the PAMM, which Duval-Carri\u00e9 produced in 2013, are contemporary twists on original works by nineteenth-century artists, such as Martin Johnson Heade, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church. They were hired to create their art works in order to promote colonial and economic development in the once-untarnished Caribbean.<\/p>\n

The original paintings depict the Caribbean as an undiscovered Eden \u2013 lush and beautiful, vibrant and brimming with opportunity, but don\u2019t show the grim realities the islands\u2019 natives must face \u2013 enslavement, political oppression and the forced loss of their lands.<\/p>\n

A brooding sense of mystery accompanies each aluminum-framed painting, often showing faceless figures. According to Duval-Carri\u00e9, these figures represent \u201cghosts of the past,\u201d which often went left out in the earlier works of Head, Bierstadt and Church.<\/p>\n

Many of his paintings\u2019 titles contain some of these artists\u2019 names, to suggest his modern rendition of the original work.<\/p>\n

One of Duval-Carri\u00e9\u2019s more notable pieces, \u201cAfter Bierstadt \u2013 The Landing of Columbus,\u201d which is 96 x 144 inches, is the painting that contains both popular fictitious icons and historical ones, such as Mickey Mouse, Batman, Marie Antoinette, Christopher Columbus, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Mr. Potato Head, acting as colonists arriving to new, tropical land.<\/p>\n

By using pop culture cartoons and historic icons, Duval-Carri\u00e9 brings a sense of humor to his strong messages of political oppression, almost making the viewer not take it so seriously.<\/p>\n

However, in the painting a gunboat looms in the distance, which is the more serious symbol of the pending Western invasion to come. Both additions in Duval-Carri\u00e9\u2019s work complement one another nicely and stay fresh in your memory.<\/p>\n

A captivating rendition of Heade\u2019s hummingbird paintings by Duval-Carri\u00e9 is shown in \u201cAfter Heade: Hummingbirds.\u201d Heade\u2019s original work, which depicts fruitfulness, blossoming exotic flowers and iridescent hummingbirds, is shown to be the opposite in Duval-Carri\u00e9\u2019s work, although not any less beautiful in its execution.<\/p>\n

In the contemporary work, hummingbirds are yet to be seen in the picture and lively greenery and flora are far from present. Framed in a circular canvas, the painting with its generous amounts of black and silver glitter and splashes of sunset pink and Mediterranean blue represent the serious lack of tropical fertility breathtakingly.<\/p>\n

Aside from Duval-Carri\u00e9\u2019s 11 tapestry-sized paintings, within the exhibit hang two of his chandelier sculptures that resemble upside down cakes, lit with purple lights. The chandeliers\u2019 lights accompanied by the room\u2019s own reflect off of the hung art works in such a way that the shimmering almost optimistically blinds the viewer from understanding the true meaning behind Duval-Carri\u00e9\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Almost.<\/p>\n