Aesthetes of the Caribbean

Earlier this fall, Santa Barbara’s art scene gained an intriguing and must-see new addition with the opening of the Seimandi & Leprieur Gallery, a sleek and renovated gallery space devoted to art from Martinique and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Behind the operation is the couple Fanny Seimandi and Julien Leprieur, from France by way of a 10-year period living in Martinique, where they grew to appreciate the unique islander perspective of contemporary art in that area.

For its inaugural show, the gallery was given over to the fascinating, quasi-primitive yet erudite black-and-white work of Ricardo Ozier-Lafontaine, in the exhibition Fertilum. With the current group show Whose Paradise? the focus expands to showcase a diverse handful of Martinque-connected artists (some are from the island but now based in Paris), giving a sampling of the breadth of work in that area.

Differences of medium, message, and points of view aside, these artists, in various ways, give credence to the show’s subtitle “reimagining the tropical paradise through Caribbean contemporary art.” Another point of commonality is a concern for interpreting natural influences and basking in the inherent beauty of the “paradisiacal” island while seeking new, cliché-free avenues of expression on the subject. 

Nature, while a strong undercurrent, is revisited, reexplored, and abstracted. Anyone seeking affirmation or travelogue-esque pretty tropicality won’t find it here.

Ozier-Lafontaine has two pieces under the rubric of “Aesthetic Research — The Dragonflies of Loving Care.” Dense, tightly knit skeins of leaf-shaped forms cohere into slightly dizzying visual meshes — all presented in his characteristic black-and-white, apart from a single beam of a red dot in the mix. Op art aspects blend with tough loving natural notions.

In sharp contrast, color veritably sizzles and soothes in Karine Taïlamé’s vivid acrylic paintings. Pastel and fluorescent hues are the central force in this art, with gently varied color grounds hosting tactile protrusions of paint, suggesting leafage and the physicality of nature. The two largest pieces range from the oceanic scene in “Unique” to the surreal floral outburst of “Magnificentia.”

In Taïlamé’s work, as well as that of her gallery mates, suggestion is an operative attitude, in art aimed at sidestepping stereotyped depictions of island paradise. Across the room, for instance, further natural reconstruction is at work with the oil pastels of Dora Vital. Imagery of silhouetted leaves and enigmatic fragments of plant life blend with matters of light and dark — reflecting the dramatic atmospheric conditions and changes in the Caribbean. 

“Nocturnal Garden 2” is a large piece seemingly in some unspecified undersea or dream-like space, versus the pink-suffused skyscape of “Untitled.”

Nature plays itself in Anabell Guerrero’s photography. The realistic clarity of her starkly lovely black-and-white images of sea and cloud play, with different formations at different moments, contrasts with the light-touch of photo manipulation of her images of forest thickets. Her vision of natural “beauty” is a rugged, untamed one, minus the prettification and hierarchical points of focus in traditional landscape photography, in which flowers, mountains and vistas take center stage. 

In yet another stylistic and mediumistic corner, Pierre-Roy Camille (a Martinique native living in Paris) engages a unique artistic process. He uses stencils, spray paint, grids, and leaf tracings in his image-making toolkit, to distinctive trans-media ends. The resulting art has an evocative and mysterious character, as with “Memories of a Magician,” fabricated visions of regal sculptures lost amid palm trees. His “Blinded by the Lights” series, conversely, are murky, quirky visual riddles, with nature and the nature of light as jumping-off points in pursuit of a new abstract objective. 

With Whose Paradise? this valuable young gallery continues to offer a fresh perspective, presenting artists from a “paradise” with fresh ideas about their home, and contemporary artistic practice. Vive le différence.

Whose Paradise? is on view through November 22 at Seimandi & Leprieur Gallery (33 W. Anapamu St.). See seimandileprieur.com.