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I
nfluenced as much by the tilework of Iranian architecture as well as the glittering spectrum of colors of desert sand, Pari Ravan’s dreamlike paintings place us into an utterly exotic, otherworldly realm. While seemingly grounded in dreams, these paintings also tap into a basic human desire for tranquility, escape and peace. Like magnificent vistas, her works show us a grand expanse of sky and landscape, with the details of manmade objects, or blooming plants, tucked into a corner of the canvas. The juxtaposition creates a dramatic tension and raises questions about longing, peace, and absence.
The sun and clouds figure largely in her work, as does the moon as it reflects the sun’s light, creating an effect of both of serenity but also melancholy. The natural world is a cohesive whole, Ravan is possibly saying, but where there is humanity and its intrusion in the world, there is always longing, or loss, as the abandoned objects or crumbling castles suggest.
The message Ravan is possibly presenting to us about the world is both one of love but also a warning. Are the open spaces of these works a piece of untouched nature, or some abandoned wasteland? Ravan’s strength as an artist lies in her refusing to answer this question, as the ambivalence of experience is what drives these haunting works.
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PARI RAVAN
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THIERRY FAZIAN
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T
o Thierry Fazian the Caribbean is a “melting pot of civilizations” where French, English, Spanish, Creole, and Portuguese cross and converge with wholly unique outcomes. In his Surrealist paintings Fazian explores this in a unique way. Surrealism is a style not seen in the Caribbean, yet Fazian’s work holds its own against the looming weight of the Surrealist tradition. Using the European painting style, Fazian paints scenes of landscapes influenced by his Caribbean surroundings in bright, saturated, graphic color inhabited by figures influenced by Caribbean culture such as drum-headed humans. These precision of these figures contrasts with the fantastical nature of these human-like creatures that wander across a world eerily reminiscent of our own in a story that is only partly revealed on the canvas. Fazian has experienced the melting pot nature of the region on a personal level. Fazian is a native of Guadalupe, a French-Caribbean island. Here, French culture and Caribbean culture coexist. Thus Fazian literally straddles the divide, calling himself French while at the same time being physically located in a wholly different place. With these paintings—a hybrid of European and Caribbean cultural traditions—Fazian finds a voice in which to express and interrogate the relation between the intra-cultural heritage present in the Caribbean as well as the future of this hybridized culture.
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