GEORGES LE CHEVALLIER:
RECENT PAINTIGS AT DENIS BIBRO GALLERY
Curated by Mauricio Laffitte-Soler
Steffany Martz
July 5 – July 19, 1994

It is both illuminating and ironic that Georges Le Chevallier’s first New York show should take place during what is arguably the most multi-cultural summer much of the country has ever seen. (I am referring here to the World Cup, but more about that later). While New Yorkers may consider themselves immune to the excitement generated by an influx of visitors from other countries and cultures, even the most blasé would acknowledge the little extra jolt of energy on the streets during the recent Gay games and Stonewall commemoration. Further proof, if that is necessary here, that one doesn’t have to cross national borders to encounter widely held values that differ from those associated with the mainstream culture.

On the streets of New York City, where Caucasians officially have been in the minority for a couple of years now, the multi-cultural future is here. This mix, this potent babble of languages, skin tones and beliefs make highly visible the necessity of finding a means of communication that transcends these differences- or at least contains them in the same field of possibilities. Artists all over the world actively have been engaged in this search for centuries, so it’s hardly surprising that Le Chevallier should decide to test his mettle in these seductive waters. But today’s art world is as driven by arguments over multi-culturalism and political correctness as the rest of society- perhaps even more so. It is therefore very surprising that Le Chevallier would choose to make his statement with that highly suspect medium, paint. It is acrylic paint to be sure, acrylic paint mixed with sand, mixed with coffee beans, mixed with burlap and plastic netting, but paint nonetheless. It seems doubly ironic, then, that these paintings do not look political in any generally accepted sense of the word.

The paintings, three large canvases, along with several smaller ones and a group of works on paper, are arresting. They are clearly the work of someone who loves paint both for the color it carries and for the physical properties. This concern with textures is, in fact, one of the most salient characteristics of the work. It is this plastic quality, the texture of the paint, that is enhanced by the use of the so-called non-art materials. The sand, burlap and coffee bags do more than add texture to the work, however. Their introduction also brings the real world into the picture. The real world with its multiplicity of images and information; the real world with its fragmented experience. These paintings may be abstract, but their thematic concerns are very much in the kingdom of concrete reality.

At first glance, the multi-colored, multi-textured, multi-layered fragments of “Chipolopolo Yo! #1 (1993, Mixed Media on Canvas, 80”x74”) seem to be competing with each other. Fighting for space, fighting for attention, fighting for primacy. That is to say they mimic the atmosphere most us inhabit every day. Yet the painting, unlike real life (at least most of the time) somehow is resolved in a formal balance that eventually directs the viewer into a contemplation of wholeness- the richness, depth and even generosity of the artist’s vision. The various segments of vertical and horizontal stripes, solids and the lone figural element all are allowed their full power. But they are defined, kept within bounds, by stripes of burlap collaged onto canvas. This juxtaposition creates the tension in the work, the buzz. The burlap’s formal function is underscored by its symbolic aspects: the burlap comes from coffee bags. Le Chevallier, the product of a half-French, half-Puerto Rican household variously located on two continents, sees coffee as a unifying element. People all over the world drink it, not to mention the early links forged between Africa, Europe and the Americas by the coffee trade.

Le Chevallier dedicates the “Chipolopolo Yo!” series to the memory of the 1993 Zambian National Soccer team. The entire team perished in a plane shortly before the World Cup, and the country was forced to pull together a new team with whatever talent it could find. The chant the Zambians used to cheer on their new team: “Chipolopolo Yo!.” It means strong, unbeatable, never gives up.

“Café,” (1993, Mixed Media on Canvas, 72”x80”) and “Café D’Italia” (1993, Mixed Media on Canvas, 72’x66”) the other two large canvases in the show, despite some common iconographic elements, have a much different spirit. The coffee/burlap connection- the search for meaning in unity is still here (the names of the paintings are taken from the words stenciled on the coffee bags), but the number of elements fighting for our attention is considerably diminished. The main themes in these paintings seem to be different painting styles, geometric and organic abstraction. In “Café,” the dark, left hand side of the canvas is actually acrylic painted on burlap. The tactile qualities of the paint are then further enhanced and manipulated into wrinkles and fissures, which echo the thick black lines snaking across the gray. The effect is startling. The gray section seems alive- alive and hungry, moving across the canvas as if to cover completely the stark white and red on the right. Or is the dark, teeming burlap being removed, pulled back to reveal the pristine white underneath? The issue remains unsettled, leaving us free to examine and revel in the varied textures of the work.

The metaphor of battling art styles continues in “Café D’Italia.” Here there is a much larger area of white with which to contend. The areas of organic abstraction seem not so much to be fighting with the geometric as asking the viewer to compare them, to see how easily they dwell next to one another. The red stripe that frames the white canvas deliberately and firmly includes within its purview the thick, mottled patches at the top of the canvas. These two different styles had better to get along- in this work the raw burlap could be working its way up to envelope the entire canvas.

These paintings are the result of several years of work concentrated toward integrating experiments with textures, different painting styles, and collage elements with the artist’s classical Spanish training, and what he describes as the charged atmosphere of New York. His goal: to visually oppose and unite the geometric and the organic, the spiritual and the intellectual, the spontaneous and the premeditated,” … “I aim to reach a unity of contradictions or to join impossibilities.” Le Chevallier’s work with different painting styles is surely a showcase for his knowledge of art history, but it is also the result of an intense studio experience. This is an artist whose relationship to the canvas is an all-encompassing one, like that of the Abstract Expressionists. He understands that different styles of painting change both how and what one sees. That he chooses to continue painting when others have abandoned the medium may be an indication of his ethnic background (yes, painting is the most important art technique in Latin America today), but it is also a mark of his individuality and determination to stick to his struggle to deal with old and new in evolutionary rather than revolutionary ways. Le Chevallier’s use of collage elements or found objects allows him to contribute to the discussion of the painted canvas as art object. More importantly, however, it feeds an obvious delight in texture and surface.

Le Chevallier’s obsession with textures, a passion that began the first time he put paint to a palette, is evident in all his current work. It is also another area in which his work bridges the old and new worlds, in that his original impulse was reinforced and intensified by his introduction to contemporary Spanish art (a brief look at the work of Tapies, Barcelo, or Sicilia will confirm this). The connection between Le Chevallier’s heavily worked surfaces and process is also important, because it is process, which transforms and connects the disparate ideas into a single, unified whole.

“Exit Art” founder Papo Colo defies a state in which cultures influences one another in ways that lead to their mutual transformation as the “hybrid state.” Implicit in this “hybrid state,” is the “authority to influence what has influenced your knowledge, an experience that builds another experience, a way to see life broader than your immediate life.”i

While Le Chevallier says that the problems he’s dealing with in these paintings are primary formal or aesthetic, he acknowledges this work is very personal- a sort of “psychological landscape.” One can sense the emotional impulse behind the paintings, but the overall effect seems to me to be one of emotion controlled by a highly developed formal intelligence. The works on paper have a rougher quality- turbulent emotion itself perhaps the focus. Both the paintings and the works on paper strike me as optimistic. Oddly, perhaps, because, these are not necessarily “happy” works. But both categories, whatever the emotional tone, seem to me to communicate Le Chevallier’s intense involvement with his art- the actual process of it. And it is in this moment of communication that the artist and viewer become one.

Steffany Martz worked for fifteen years as a reporter for NBC and ABC networks. Currently she is the Director of Steffany Martz Gallery in New York City.