26 May – 10 July Room Philip West. First Floor
Fluid Solaris is the title of the exhibition featuring Janice Hathaway’s collages now on display at the Eugenio Granell Foundation. These works have nothing to do with the collages by Amparo Segarra that we are so familiar with. Amparo’s collages follow the cut-and-paste tradition, but with a great sense of the space and beauty of the images that she liked and that caught her attention. She first of all chose the images, then cut them out or cut them up and, finally, pasted them.
Janice’s collages, on the other hand, belong “to the great company of daring adventurers ranging from Hannah Hoch to Romare Bearden, from Max Ernst to Anne Ethuin, who have made collage one of the best and safest ways of discovery and transformation.” (Franklin Rosemont). In his important study on collages, Sergio Lima (who has also exhibited his work at the Eugenio Granell Foundation) declares that “collage is a short-circuit of different images.”
In the artist’s own words: “I want my collages to stimulate reflection on the relationship between nature and culture, handiwork and technology, the Wonderful and the everyday.” Obviously being a good photographer, Janice, by digitalising these photos, creates new and fantastic images evoking very personal oneiric worlds.
This exhibition highlights the artist’s magnificent use of flowers, for example, and of nature in general. Several titles have names from Hawaii, where she lived for twenty years. It is not surprising that the beauty of these islands have captivated Janice’s imagination. Its rich nature, its exoticism and exuberance, obviously influence the opulence of colours filling these works. The reds, yellow, blues, different shades of green (like the greens of the tropics), oranges and pinks. They all shine on their own, also presenting us with a vision of the work itself.
As is usually the case with surrealists, the titles challenge us and are an important part of the work. Life in Hawaii helped to inspire the creation of several titles. One of them, with its evocative meaning, Mana Wa (“Now is the time of power”); Kana’ohe is the name of a town in Ohau (where Honolulu is located) and Ko’olau is the name of extensive mountains (very long) that are in Ho’omaluia Park. Other titles come from literature; Qu’il, for example, the first book handmade by Janice, comes from a verse from Rimbaud’s book of poetry, written under the influence of opium, A Season in Hell. Chanduis the name of a blue bird that lived in Franklin and Penelope Rosemont’s house in Chicago and often came out of its cage to fly around the house.
The work Seasonal Solicitude, as Janice herself told us, is made up of several photos, including the pond at Monet’s house and another detail from Hawaii. The greens in this work shine brightly and the snail invites us to enter the work cautiously through that enigmatic hole. Perhaps the cityscape at the bottom suggests the place we can reach. Two works, among many, in which there is a predominance of bright red are Guardian and Essence. In the former, the colour (form) acquires a compact shape, while the flower in the latter exposes itself unabashedly to the world; not to mention the bright yellow of its leaves and pedicle. Both forms are surrounded by water in movement.
(Natalia Fernandez Segarra. Director of Curator).
