Ryan Mendoza

Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Trento
Through August 20

Ryan Mendoza's show is an anthology of more than 40 works depicting, as their main theme, humanity at the fringes of society, composed of individuals who are left out of any context of interrelationships and live alone with their crude nudity.

With respect to works of past years, the artist has matured; the more recent paintings shown seem suspended between figuration and the lack of figurativeness, reaching levels of great formal synthesis - it's no coincidence that Mendoza favors artists such as Bonnard, Vuillard and Dennis, whose influence can be seen in works like The Orange Man and Blue Boy with Bow Tie.

Mendoza's painting - enriched by continual references to art history, from Goya and Nineteenth Century "representative" photography, to more recent painters such as Julian Schnabel and David Salle - builds up to a figuration of expressionistic ascendancy portraying contemporary man as continually poised between his personal history and a dramatic present. In this sense, the absolute use of black and white in Brothers or Lady with Hat can be considered significant.

As an expressive medium Mendoza prefers the portrait, doing in particular large size works.While continuing to maintain the materialism and the tragedy for which he is known, the pieces exhibited shows him to be particularly attentive to graffiti, in the wake of Jean-Michel Basquiat's unforgettable hard and raw style, as if the force and the immediacy of events linked to memory could be transcribed and condensed in a few gestural spasms.

Untitled, seven recent small drawings, done in oil on paper, confirm a complexity of design in which one notes a reworking of the Pop tradition.




Andrea Bruciati
Joanne Tedone