Words by Marc Haefele, Senior Arts Writer, Bermudez Projects
Emmanuel Crespo’s broad-spectrum personal iconography includes whales, paper boats, grasshoppers, goldfish, umbrellas and other images drawn from the bottomless depths of his imagination and memory. It is the juxtaposition of these immaculately rendered creatures and objects, sometimes conjoined and sometimes simply hovering in space, that fill his pictures – and their viewer – with an admixture of puzzlement, certainty, and even dread.
The Mythmaker, Crespo’s recent body of work, serves as a kind of prequel, or predecessor, to his initial 2014 solo show at Bermudez Projects, Los Angeles.
This time, there is a thematic progress among the 10 paintings, mostly in acrylic and graphite on wooden panels, accompanied by two paper mâché based mixed-media sculptures.
It’s the imaginary journey of Crespo’s named protagonist – whom he terms The Mythmaker – a symbolic, half naked male figure wearing a crow’s face mask, who insinuates himself through the tableaux of this series, usually, it would appear, in search of inspiration for the purpose of creativity and an overall understanding of his reason for being.
With this series, the artist offers his viewers a transpersonal knowledge.
“I am interested in producing a symbolic vocabulary to rediscover and retell the metaphysical narratives that frame my experience,” says Crespo. “My work is an attempt to create and illustrate a personal mythology.”
This is a mythology in which a masked man can be seated while encircled by a school of goldfish; an elephant can march with a potted plant on its back while a murder of crows flies overhead; a half naked man can push a giant-sized paper boat; or in which a shirt-sleeved man and a gently hovering blue whale can have an ordinary-looking conversation, surmounted by a trio of distant crows in full flight.
Each of these fantastical scenes takes place over a fleeting pale amber pattern that one gradually realizes is the grain of the birch wood panel on which the picture is painted.
For Crespo, painting on raw, unprepared wood gives the work a frontal immediacy. The symbols for him are highly personal.
The ubiquitous goldfish in Crespo’s work serves as a type of muse or agent of inspiration. His crows, like doves, symbolize peace – sometimes in full flight or experiencing metamorphosis and/or reincarnation.
Crespo’s mythology is one where incongruent characters meet in a kind of a metaphysical conversation, conceivably of inspiration and serenity, more likely still an encounter of two inner forces quite beyond words themselves.
“Ultimately, I’ve produced a recurring cast of characters to help these stories unfold,” says Crespo. “They are placed in compositions that vaguely suggest metaphysical occurrences, but intentionally leave the details to the viewer.”
Thus, despite the vividness of the imagery, the final meaning is always left to the viewer. As Crespo puts it, “The ambiguity is intended to allow the characters to play in their meanings and roles, and also meant to encourage a personal reflection in the viewer.”
“My process is a way for me to redress age-old figures and themes according to my personal experience,” adds Crespo. “It is a way for me to find myself in these narratives, in the hope of maintaining or renewing their relevance.”
