Every year we wait for Spring, as the ancients waited for Persephone and in that wait we are rewarded with the first buds pushing up from the soil, breaking out on branches, and de las Mercedes’ many odes to flowers likewise reward our wait. Drawing on the notion of a certitude in spring growth, this exhibition explores not only the cyclical quality of seasons, but also the artist’s repeated return to the subject.
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Franck de las Mercedes
There is an interesting marriage between de las Mercedes' artistic practice and how nature blooms. Known as an artist that is not the silent painter in a pristine studio, he creates works bursting with both color and energy. Not only are his works overflowing with vibrancy, their very making resembles the process of digging and planting as the artist scrapes his paint onto his canvas or paper, often filling his studio with the sounds reminiscent of machines tearing up a surface. This quality likens the process to the unheard sounds and violence of blooming and budding flowers as they break through the bonds of Winter.
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Art Poppies - 2014
Art Poppies - 2014 provides the understanding that not only is the artist interpreting the flowers he paints with his gestural brush and spatula application, he is also relying on the symbols affixed to the flowers. Poppies have been the fodder of creativity for centuries, due to their connection to opium, one of the main substances used by The Romantics to release their creativity from the constraint of the burgeoning Industrial world. De las Mercedes, in drawing on the poppy and other flowers and their links to releasing imagination from a contrived and ordered world, affords the viewer with freedom
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Izote - 2019
It is de las Mercedes' intent to allow the viewer freedom to bring themselves inside nature, without disturbing it, freedom to imagine the action involved in the work, freedom to connect to artistic practices founded in yesteryear, and freedom to imagine all that is bursting within the work.
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Check out the full exhibition on Artsy!
Curated by Melanie Prapopoulos and Brianna Fernandez
