SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

Four young artists—Justin de Ver­teuil of Ger­many, Mar­cus Leo­taud, Lon­don and Sarah Knights and Taya Ser­rao, T&T—are host­ing a joint ex­hi­bi­tion, In Lieu of Flow­ers, at the Medul­la Art Gallery (MAG), 37 Fitt Steet, Wood­brook. It runs un­til Oc­to­ber 30.

Open­ing hours at the gallery are 10 am to 6 pm Mon­day to Fri­day and 11 am to 2 pm on Sat­ur­days.

Cu­ra­tors Ge­of­frey MacLean and Mar­tin D Mout­tet ex­plained that the gallery has al­ways en­cour­aged young and in­de­pen­dent-think­ing artists to dis­play their work. In Lieu of Flow­ers, a name sug­gest­ed by de Ver­teuil em­bold­ens the non-tra­di­tion­al large­ly ex­pressed through pho­to-re­al­ism where the COVID-19 lock­down is re­flect­ed in the per­son­al ex­pres­sions of the artists’ lives dur­ing this pe­ri­od.

De Ver­teuil ex­plained that the theme was cho­sen be­cause flow­ers are a sym­bol of ex­press­ing sup­port. The sym­bol of giv­ing flow­ers is par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

He be­gan his study of paint­ing in 2013 and fur­thered his ed­u­ca­tion at the Kun­stakademie Düs­sel­dorf. He al­so gained knowl­edge from Pe­ter Doig, Seigfried Anzinger and cur­rent­ly Katharine Wulff.

Apart from the MAG, De Ver­teuil has ex­hib­it­ed at Con­tem­po­rary Art Düs­sel­dorf, The Box Gallery, and Friedrich J.H. Schnei­der-Stiftung/Stu­di­en­preis. His paint­ings for the ex­hi­bi­tion were done be­tween Jan­u­ary and March, the cold­est and dark­est days at the be­gin­ning of the sec­ond lock­down in Ger­many.

Justin de Verteuil

“I can’t write about my paint­ings ex­plic­it­ly,” he said. “I para­phrase De­gas in say­ing the mus­es don’t talk to one an­oth­er, they dance amongst each oth­er . . . ”

De Ver­teuil hopes the ex­hi­bi­tion “dances in one’s thoughts . . . points their feel­ings to­wards know­ing what paint­ings can some­times be for . . .”

He de­scribes the abil­i­ty to paint as “a rea­son to leave the house, up­end the mo­not­o­ny of day-to-day life.”

Knights has an as­so­ciate de­gree in Vi­su­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and a Bach­e­lor’s in Vi­su­al Arts from The UWI, St. Au­gus­tine. Her works are self-por­traits in­spired by pop­u­lar cul­ture, pol­i­tics, and cur­rent, so­cial and his­tor­i­cal events.

“Col­lage, em­broi­dery, acrylic and found ob­jects are em­ployed, invit­ing the view­er to look a bit clos­er. The sub­ject of self has be­come very im­por­tant in my works,” she said.

Knights ex­hib­it­ed so­lo in 2018 at MAG cu­rat­ed by Mout­tet, and among oth­ers in group at the US Chief of Mis­sion’s res­i­dence, US Em­bassy, and The Caribbean Cen­tre for the Arts, St Croix.

Leo­taud Grad­u­at­ed from Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty, Mon­tre­al, in 2008 with a Bach­e­lor’s in Fine Arts. While in Lon­don he at­tained his Mas­ter’s in Fine Arts from the Chelsea Col­lege of Art and De­sign.

He said his work is best un­der­stood un­der the um­brel­la of New Ro­man­ti­cism ref­er­enc­ing Max Hollein and Mar­ti­na Wein­hart’s cat­a­logue for Ide­al Worlds.

“Be­hind the de­sire for the par­a­disi­a­cal, the beau­ti­ful, and the mag­ic of fairy tales, the dark and the eerie are present as the in­sight that utopias are doomed to fail­ure,” he said.

Leo­taud’s work has been ex­hib­it­ed at The Whit­more Road Gallery, The Roy­al Acad­e­my’s Sum­mer Ex­hi­bi­tion and The Prince’s Foun­da­tion Gallery in Lon­don, and he was se­lect­ed for ex­hi­bi­tion at var­ied gal­leries in Lon­don.

Marcus Leotaud

Ser­rao, a mul­ti­me­dia artist liv­ing and work­ing in Port-of-Spain, ob­tained a Bach­e­lor’s in Fine Art from Coop­er Union School of Art in New York in 2018. Con­tem­po­rary ab­stract art de­scribes her work, which pro­duces a tremen­dous flow and move­ment with her im­ages.

“For this se­ries of paint­ings, I drew from my sur­round­ings. It was im­por­tant to look at sub­jects as though I was see­ing them for the first time, a form of cre­at­ing dis­tance be­tween my­self and the sub­ject, in or­der to re­al­ly ob­serve it. I am in­ter­est­ed in the way that this dis­tance can be de­pict­ed on a paint­ed sur­face and the re­la­tion­ship this process has to pho­tog­ra­phy.”

For more in­for­ma­tion on the ex­hi­bi­tion, call (868)680-1041, (868) 622-1196 or email medul­laart­gallery@gmail.com. Vis­it the gallery’s so­cial me­dia pages on In­sta­gram at medul­laart­gallery, or Face­book at medul­laart­gallery.

Taya Serrao