previous exhibition

 BRUNO METURA: Double Vision

July 9th through July 30th, 2023

Closing Reception Sunday, July 30th, 2023 3 - 6 PM

Bruno Metura: To Live the Dance of the Island

By Philip Yenawine, 2023

Bruno Metura paints to give material expression of his inner being, a complex mixture of lived experiences. He wants to pose “the question of the nonvisible in a… visible way.” He wants the ineffable workings of his heart and mind to become visible as he creates, expressing his alignment with the special nature of his island culture—he is Guadeloupean. The resulting paintings, therefore, emerge from his subconscious but to the extent that he controls his actions, he does so informed by deep knowledge of art of the past century, especially the many forms of abstraction.

Trying to write about Bruno Metura without acknowledging his Caribbean identity misses the point. Born in France to Guadeloupean parents, he chose to return to his homeland at age seventeen, deciding to continue his education there. Like all countries of the Caribbean, Guadeloupe is a set of islands situated in exquisite blueness of sea and sky and has everything we picture when the exotic Caribbean comes to mind: crescent shaped beaches, white sand, blue water, mountains, craggy rock formations, waterfalls, colorful flora and fauna both above and below the seas. It was inhabited by indigenous people as early as 3000 BCE; European incursions began after it was visited by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and enslaved Africans were introduced in the mid 1600s to grow sugar. The French eventually claimed this piece of paradise colonizing it in the 18th Century, and the resulting culture—a mix of native Caribbean influences, French, and African referred to as Creole—has an allure all its own. It only takes photographs to make you want to go there, to go in search of the dance of it, so basic to Metura’s identity.

“The Caribbean” is not a single place. It’s a sea with many island countries—Guadeloupe alone is 12—each with its own history but also much in common, at least in the minds of its admirers and visitors. Guadaloupe is colonized to this day, technically still a part of France, but even more by the international tourist industry, the islands’ economic driver. This leads to disparity of income and privilege as well as familiar trappings required to accommodate pleasure seekers. I don’t know Metura, though I would like to, but I see him as a sensitive, thoughtful, seriously educated artist who must negotiate his existence and maintain his identity within the society’s complexity, especially since he cares greatly about connecting what he makes to both his material experience and the inner workings of his heart and mind.

As he wishes it to, Metura’s work vibrates with the energy of his island existence. He doesn’t create representations of what he sees; his work is decidedly more impressionistic than descriptive. He introduces the colors to be found in nature, clothing, even architecture, but the work is rarely soft or “pretty” in part because, as of the covid shutdown, black is the dominating element. Recent paintings include other colors but rarely does the intensity match the bright colors of sea creatures or exotic birds. Such color saturated his art of the 2010s but now it is toned down, more atmospheric than referential, often peripheral.

An ever-present and crucial element since the pandemic, his uses of black push one away from clichéd views of island representation. In this image, “Migration”, black is the dominating presence, over-powering other colors and concentrating them into intense bursts. At first the painting seems as if it’s an organic, little-controlled outburst of light and dark with flashes of color. But as with most of his work, a little more looking reveals the geometric structure Metura subtly builds into the improvisational elements. In this case diagonal axes, highlighted by white accents, create lines from corner to corner and side to side. In a resulting triangle at the top, it’s tempting to find a small landscape—a waterfall cascading down a mountain side into the sea. But it’s the power of the darkness that shifts us away from a surface reading of island life and toward a deeper, darker possibility that might perhaps be seen as a metaphor for the weight of a history freighted with foreign dominance and enslavement and life recently restrained by the pandemic. While Metura’s work makes strong first impressions, spending time exploring it is always rewarded.

The diagonals that anchor ”Migration” in place within the canvas are subtle, implied rather than inscribed. In some paintings, the underlying geometric structure is more obvious, as in the drawing “Confinement#1” from the Confinement series, done during the covid period of isolation. It’s likely impossible to escape observing the building blocks here, mostly defined by the straight edges where colors butt up against one another. He’s not however making a point of geometry as some artists do. Rather he’s saying that order and chaos co-exist usefully; both are needed to depict a complex view of the nature of things. Therefore, despite the encroachment on the center by the black swarm on the left, and the waves and flows of other marks, the painting is stabilized by its foundation. Metura halts the possible slide of the composition down the dark wedge at the bottom and off the paper . It’s almost as if it’s a mural on a wall, one we know isn’t going anywhere.

Metura has written that “There is the visible world and the invisible world.” To access the invisible, which is to “see more intuitively, we must sometimes journey back to the cave.” Perhaps the painting below—particularly the black blotches in the center—exemplifies such a journey; it’s usefully titled below, “Journey from the Cave,” and it was painted as the island tried to make its way back from covid-related isolation and economic disaster. Large splashes of black ink describe the voyage as an explosive, stormy trek. The black dominates, grabbing the spotlight, especially applied in such an energetic, agitated way. The density of the blackness contrasts with the airy diaphanous veils of color beneath it. It overpowers the hints of color trying, however timidly, to emerge from the gloom. It’s not a fair competition for space. The red and lavender in the upper right constitute more a bruise than a bright spot.

In paintings like this one, Metura puts chance to work—splattering paint or ink can’t be completely controlled—but instead of leaving us with the impression of flux, what we see might be more aptly described as stopped action. We can visualize that the splattering itself was an explosive act, but once done, the result is immobile: the “return from the cave” is a journey of the imagination rather than the body. To make such images, Metura demonstrates a keen understanding of the fluidity of his material and exerts the control of an athlete rather than a meticulous work of a draftsman.

Metura knows the power of lines both to anchor a composition and to direct the viewer’s eyes around a canvas. He seldom draws a definitive line; more often lines are implied, like the one that goes down the center of this painting and others that create an underlying grid, not rigidly followed but still present. This creates a structural logic that keeps the image from floating off the canvas. Despite the splash, the painting seems static, the aftermath of catastrophe.

Metura can also create compositions that remain optically in flux, usually playing with the fact that dark colors tend to be recessive and light ones the opposite. In “Offering of the Day,” light floats out from the background as if to dispel the gloom and is welcomed by a bouquet of leaves that stand out against the dusky gray. The leaves are not the only recognizable shape here. It looks as if a face was embedded, almost as if a black and white photo were collaged in. Looking closely, you can find other facial features. Though diagonal lines force the eyes to follow their trajectories— clearly decisions not accidents—one of them cuts down through the painting from left to right and runs along the nose of the largest face. The face itself seems to want to emerge from the shadows. Other lines suggest the familiar patchwork of rectangular shapes, a spaced-out grid, that helps keep this particularly active image from swirling off the canvas.

Looking at Matura’s drawings—like the series, Hint of Illusion—one finds more figures and faces. He seems to use drawing to muse about possibilities, testing his pallet, trying different compositions, experimenting with different kinds of mark making. “Hint of Illusions #58” is an example where he’s even incorporated the texture of the paper as a feature. Lines encircle the fire-like construction mid page. The right side seems as if it might be spinning, whipping the image into circular motion. The left is dominated by dark fingers of smoke, wafting upwards. His control of his visual vocabulary is apparent—no chance involved in making this—but the overall impression is dynamic.

What we mainlanders want from a vacation— entertainment, gaiety, light heartedness—is rarely apparent in Matura’s art. It’s not that his drawings and paintings are bleak but to the extent that they are lively, the action is rooted in an interior life that’s not frivolous. The ways geometric forms, references to nature, and figures are woven into his mostly abstract paintings are thoughtful and distinctive. One can speculate that he knows about Cezanne’s geometry, Pollock’s action painting, Alber’s interaction of colors, the intensity of Siquieros and Bacon, the layering of both imagery and meaning of 1980s painters, but the outcome of his concerted efforts is inevitably a complicated and intriguing product of his own.

Read more about Philip Yenawine.

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