"This Origins & connections series takes me back into my history and spirituality.
It takes me on a journey similar to the umbilical cord that cannot be detached from the other until the time comes, the season of ultimate rupture.
This separation, which makes me a vulnerable being, pushes me to reach out to others, to the rendezvous of universal sharing.
Earthy colors, sometimes vivid, anthropo-zoomorphic shapes and dotted lines mingle with the crisp ballet of creation to bear witness to the sublime existence that is ours and the ultimate chance to connect with our origins."
Méné
A Constellation of Dreams
A few months ago, in an interview, the inimitable Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist confessed to me that "surrealism will never die." It is difficult to predict, but for now, she is not mistaken. In its own way, this artistic movement has been changing its skin at regular intervals and has been reinventing and redrawing itself for over a century. At first, it was predominantly male artists (Dalí, Breton, Man Ray, Buñuel, Miró, Magritte, Delvaux) who were sometimes inspired by female muses. When the movement seemed to decline, a more or less uncoordinated army of women from around the world injected new life into the movement, which exploded with new colors, like a castle of fireworks suspended in the air, never extinguishing. Among the notable but relatively unknown names are Toyen, Claude Cahun, Leonor Fini, Kay Sage, Jane Graverol, or Kati Horna. And among those who are more well-known are Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo, Meret Oppenheim, Remedios Varó, or Leonora Carrington.
What does all of this have to do with Ivorian artist Ange Martial Méné (1977)? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. In the face of his work, one wonders, "Have I seen this before? In this or another life? Could it be that surrealism thrives because its artists are reincarnations of colleagues from past eras?" Nevertheless, the creator journeys along the path he has chosen with his language, which sometimes recalls Miró and also the compositions of the Dau al Set group, but with colors, constellations, and daydreams that are uniquely his own. They speak of his environment, of how despotic (not by beauty, but by cruelty) history, life, the exploitation of others, the plundering of what is not one's own, and atomic pollution that persists decades after colonization has ended can be.
The presence of Méné in the African art scene that is joyfully reaching our shores (if we are not directly seeking it at the source) is significant not only because his surreal and sometimes dramatic style, with canvases reminiscent of fragments of Picasso's Guernica, escapes the highly cultivated genre of portraiture. That genre is masterfully cultivated and has a fascinating impact by artists such as Oluwole Omofemi, Matthew Eguavoen, Daniel Onguene, Olivia Mae Pendergast, or in her own way, with those letters written on faces, the marvelous work of Marion Boehm. In contrast, Méné directs his gaze to the landscape that surrounds us, both the physical landscape and that of the mind that appears when we close our eyes. These are real and figurative landscapes made of dreams, nourished by dreams, and a source of dreams. Not only that, his work connects with ancient African (and therefore universal) arts, with the thread and needle of sewing, basket weaving, masks, and the most vehement present. It speaks to us about the mutilation of our planet, the extraction of the sap that nourishes the earth, overexploitation, desiccation... and the struggle and denunciation that come with reversing these processes.
Last year, in his native Dakar, Méné presented the exhibition 'Sankofa, Returning to the Sources' at the OH Gallery, a statement of intent to preserve our world and beautify it, taking into account the invisible powers of respect for nature, tradition, the mastery of artisans, and the technology that was so important in the past and now fights not to be pushed aside by the other technology, the capriciousness of algorithms. In Sankofa, the dreamlike depths of Méné give rise to a forest in the middle of the rooms. Art as the salvation of nature, and forests as a refuge for painting.
There is something initiatory, a faith in the wild, and cave art in the work of the Ivorian artist, where there is neither perspective nor escape, which gives the viewer the freedom to explore every inch of the canvas with the same attention. And that is important because surrealism is rooted in that freedom, and its religiosity has no commandments but palpitations that invite levitation. "Cave art is an initial source of inspiration," the artist tells us, "and a subject of study. I don't imitate it, but I am interested in that process of hunting, of seeing the beast once it is brought down and, therefore, discovering its form. There is something dreamlike, worshipful, and therapeutic in that form of ancestral painting. I like it."
Felip Vivanco
Art critic
La Vanguardia, Barcelona, Spain
