AfterNyne Magazine features Hermann Mejía’s first UK solo show, within at Gallery Elena Shchukina, in their latest online issue:
From today to November 10th, Gallery Elena Shchukina will be presenting the first-ever UK solo exhibition for Hermann Mejía. The exhibition features works from the artist’s latest series Within, exploring memories, disappointments, unfulfilled dreams and frustrated lives as depicted through landscapes and animals. Inspired by struggle and conflict, Hermann Mejía defines and communicates complex ideas and emotions through the combination of introspection, meditation and art.
Mejía believes that the relationship between these elements allows his artistic practice to act as therapy, his work demonstrating the process and results of self-discovery. Pond is an allegory for an abandoned house; a shell where the ghosts of memories, disappointments, and dreams unfulfilled are held and through the crevices, cracks and walls the grass grows giving new life and meaning. Its murky bottom allows the viewer to imagine the infinite whish symbolising the abyss.
Mejía’s art on display at Gallery Elena Shchukina forms part of a collection that explores similar concepts found in Pond – that is landscapes that symbolise loss as the result of struggle – with other pieces such as Hanging examining the nature of an inert dog that floats between the branches of a tree. It is through these landscapes that Mejía creates works that are both engaging and visually exciting, as renowned art critic Edward Lucie-Smith comments: “Mejía’s art is a joyful, reckless statement about being seized by the demon of visual creativity” The selection of watercolours exhibited refer to photographs that he compiled to capture the recent Venezuelan riots.
These paintings evoke undefined beings caught in movement as if they are battling through smoke, scents, forms and colours. Either fighting for or against, they are in pursuit of the transformation of their future and their surroundings. As a result, this series is an allegory of the violent energy that emanates from transition and transformation. All of Mejía’s work contains snapshots connected to his history, his culture, and his environment. These moments are encrypted by metaphors, symbols, and allegories with human beings, objects, and animals stamped with his own personal quirks.