eSefarad Noticias del Mundo Sefaradi
Exhibition: “Mixed media”
(Rabbi Cyril Harris Community
Centre, Oaklands, (011) 728-8088)
Artist: Leon Soriano
Until: December 12
REVIEWED BY ROBYN SASSEN
THIS EXHIBITION of over 50 drawings, paintings and original prints by Toronto artist Leon Soriano, demonstrates an engaging looseness of descriptive line, while it skirts into troubling ideological waters, reflecting the idea of poverty-stricken Africa as romanticised and frozen.
The wonderful mellifluousness of Soriano’s melding of tonal flesh is most evident in “Waiting for the Bus”, a relatively small, predominantly red piece in a diversity of mediums.
Here Soriano allows the colour to flow in and around the forms described; the result is a deep yet idiosyncratic representation of waiting outside amid the vagaries of weather. This conflation between the body and the world is clearly central to his oeuvre.
Soriano’s work on this show is defined by its lack of uniformity.
Many of the works – some of which date back to 1979 – are small, but this doesn’t diminish the largeness and boldness of the gestures which inform them.
He plays with texture, with collage, with the silence evoked by white paint – which in some respects conjures up an understanding of the glissando and shimmer of African heat, while in others, is about the overriding silent blanket of Canadian snow.
You look at his work and you may think of Pierneef, given how he allows branches and sky to intersect and cross hatch. You may think of Moore in his oft diagrammatic rendition of the human form.
You may even think of Battiss when you consider the all-overness of some of his compositions, and the wild use of possibilities, from varnish and gold leaf to coloured etching ink.
The work collectively teeters dangerously with marketing clichés redolent of the sixties, seventies and eighties in South Africa however, when it reflects “township life”. This was a genre established by white people articulating savvy in what would get black artists market, particularly during the grim days of apartheid.
This romanticising of poverty became a legitimate but deeply controversial movement, rejected in time by black artists of the ilk of the late Durant Sihlali (1935 – 2004).
Scenes in this genre from the brush of an artist from the other side of the geographical spectrum, sticks in one’s craw. In media statements, Soriano articulates a re-engagement with what it means to be African – he emigrated to Canada in 2000 – and while these emotions of course have validity, his expression of them on canvas and paper in a peri-urban context – such as “Soweto Life” – is disturbing.
Soriano’s unequivocally finest works on this show are his drawings in ink. Evoking the harsh but specific line work of Lithuanianborn American artist Ben Shahn (1898 – 1969), two framed, but untitled and undated drawings in warm sepias with thick ink on hand-textured paper, use the human form to construct space and identity poetically.
An explorer, a lover of the possibilities that texture brings, and one fascinated with the human form, Soriano is clearly a committed practitioner and a bold experimenter.
Source: SA Jewish Report
