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Michel Vermeulen is
a painter with luxurious talent, strong art expression and very
specific
poetics. His painting is lyrical, almost illustrative, but with
deep roots in the modern painting of the 20th century. You could
easily find the modest signs of quoting the cubism,
impressionism, surrealism and sometimes even covered
expressionism. However, with strong lyricism of the expression,
Vermeulen brings very openly the emotions in his works and in
that way gives them a completely new, post-modernist dimension.
The tradition is here used as an instrument, or as a selection
of instruments used by the artist skillfully and with
inspiration.
The painter uses colors as " the mirror of the soul" or, even,
as the soul itself. Thanks to that, his works make very intimate
connection with the observer. You are not yourself aware of the
fact that those paintings have succeeded to enter your soul,
that they have become part of your personal emotions, and, of
course, then they look like something very familiar - something
that you know well and that you love. Of course, in that way you
only confirm that you have a soul which has adopted these
paintings and recognized them as its integral part. Such effect
cannot be achieved either with technic, or style, or
paraphrasing the other authors, but with the authentic talent
and expression of this author, who has succeeded in approaching
the human soul in the way Dostoyevsky has succeeded in
literature. But in contrast to Dostoyevsky, who was mostly
occupied with the abysses of the human soul, Vermeulen is more
occupied with the notion of the universal beauty, the beauty
which conquers the observer. Of course, this painter does not
avoid the abysses of the human soul. If we observe better the
coloring of these paintings, we will see some marvelous
darkening on the edges, we will see a bit indented and almost
broken shapes.
On the plan of symbolism, it seems that forms and colors are
intentionally confronted and in that way the human dualism is
presented. The warmth, singing and ease of colours are
confronted to almost expressionistic form. As if the man's
destiny is a dream about the beauty and the almost passionate
cruelty of existence.
The composition is balanced to that point, that it covers very
skillfully the whole layers of hidden meanings, emotions, hopes
and fears.
For almost three decades I have been engaged in art criticism,
but until now I have never met a painter who uses so skillfully
the modern tradition ( this expression alone would represent
"the dissonance" mentioned by H. Fridrich), the general places
of modern art, in order to build his own, authentic expression.
As in the system of matrix, everything is interwoven with dreams
of different dreamers, dreamt completely through the dream of
one artist. If for E. A. Poe the life was only " the dream about
the dream", then for this artist: the art is a dream about
dreams which have been dreamt by the others.
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