Charris in Tikiland

It was to be expected that sooner or later, Ángel Mateo Charris (Cartagena, Murcia, 1962) would end up in the Pacific islands, on the other side of the world. For an artist that feeds off of his experiences, whose work is the sum of layers and layers of travel, reality is always a good pretext for confirming preconceived ideas about a subject of work. Visiting every corner of the planet is not essential - and sometimes it is even as counterproductive as it is disappointing - but it helps in understanding the way in which the canonical depiction of a place is constructed. Inevitably, things always end up being what we believe they are, so it is more convenient for us to operate based on simplification. In this case, people expect Polynesia to be comparable with the idea in their heads, which they have interiorized from postcards. In other words, pleasant portrayals of a sublimated setting, illusions that, today, make the shared imagery stronger than what we see with our own eyes. This is true to such an extent that, without realizing it, we place the stereotype above the empirical truth of things, or shape reality to what we have been told it should be. 

In response to this meta-real imposture, to the passivity of the conforming viewer who believes in adherence to easy archetypes that require no further complications, in his paintings, Charris creates a strategy of sedition that ends up leaving an impression on the intelligent observer. His work, silent and apparently harmless, creates a subtle visual device that, through seduction, criticizes these false utopias, permeating a narrative rich in ambiguous resources and paradoxical situations with mysteries. The thing is to think by painting or paint by thinking, never to stop moving the gears of this backwards and forwards palindrome that makes it possible to look for motives to continue navigating. In this, he is tireless and persistent. In the more than thirty years that have passed since he began his career in the mid-eighties of the last century, he has ventured into highly different territories: from the course of the Niger River in Mali (Tubabus en Tongorongo. Cartagena, 2001) to the ice of the Arctic and the snows of Kilimanjaro (Blanco. Madrid, Cádiz, 2003). The journey may be literal or figurative, it does not matter, the important thing is to have a path to walk down all the time, to move forward and harvest stimuli that make sense within history. Charris is not one to work on several plots at once; he prefers to get to the bottom of an issue and does not stop until he feels he has squeezed out all its possibilities. And when he finishes...he starts afresh. It is a process of tension and easing, absorption and release. He often takes these voyages that interweave life and work in the company of close friends like another painter, Gonzalo Sicre, or the architect, Martín Lejarraga. With the former, he followed the tracks of Edward Hopper in the United States (Cape Cod / Cabo de Palos. Cartagena, Valencia, 1997-1998) and of Leon Spilliaert in Flemish Belgium (Insomnio. Murcia, 2011). With the latter, he has collaborated on several building projects summarized in the exhibition Piel de asno (Burgos, 2013). 

One of the most interesting aspects discussed by Clement Greenberg in his critical essays is the appearance of kitsch, a reverse that took root in the era of the historical avant-garde. “Where there is an avant-garde –he says-, generally we also find a rear-guard. Simultaneously with the entrance of the avant-garde, a second new cultural phenomenon appeared in the industrial West: that thing to which the Germans give the wonderful name of kitsch: popular commercial art and literature, with their chromeotypes, magazine covers, illustrations, ads, slick and pulp fiction, comics, Tin Pan Alley music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies, etc.” To explain its emergence in the early decades of the 20th century, Greenberg relates this phenomenon of the masses to the literacy of the peasants and petty bourgeois who settled in cities after the industrial revolution, uncultivated people incapable of enjoying traditional refined culture (opera, concerts, the fine arts and so on) who invent a kind of substitute fit for their own consumption to occupy their spare time. Since then, esthetic values begin to be measured by a different standard, highbrow art patronized by the elite becoming indiscriminately mixed with its substitute, uncontrolled spontaneous art forms generated cheaply in the streets devoted to meeting the demands of a new audience eager for diversion. 

Ángel Mateo Charris has always chosen to feed off this relatively recent underlayer, which laid the foundations for the image-based civilization in which we live. A considerable number of figures and scenes in his paintings came from fragments recovered from the '30s, '40s, '50s and '60's of the last century. At first, he took references from old magazines or any other sources that gave him a connection to this past, thus creating figures in enigmatic poses that gave a dash of mystery to his work. Later, starting in the late '90s with the spread of the digital camera and the arrival of the Internet, it became much easier to search for hints. What mattered was not the tracking method or the use of one procedure or another; the key must be found in this all-embracing attitude generated by kitsch culture, capable of regurgitating any useful icon, no matter its origin or descent. “Kitsch has not been confined to the cities in which it was born, but has flowed out over the countryside, wiping out folk culture. Nor has it shown any regard for geographical and national-cultural boundaries. Another mass product of Western industrialism, it has gone on a triumphal tour of the world, crowding out and defacing native cultures in one colonial country after another, so that it is now by way of becoming a universal culture, the first universal culture ever beheld. Today the Chinaman, no less than the South American Indian, the Hindu, no less than the Polynesian, have come to prefer to the products of their native art magazine covers, rotogravure sections and calendar girls. How is this virulence of kitsch, this irresistible attractiveness, to be explained? Naturally, machine-made kitsch can undersell the native handmade article, and the prestige of the West also helps, but why is kitsch a so much more profitable export article than Rembrandt?”, reflects and wonders Clement Greenberg as early as 1939. 

Charris' work draws from the memory of an era not so long ago that reveals a world in transition, running from the decline of colonial imperialism to the start of globalization. Unequivocally, images have a greater impact on us than words, and therefore these decontextualized depictions communicate emotions and sensations better. Memories and evocation are made primarily of images, a means of remembrance that acts as a gateway to the motifs we miss. Furthermore, the halo of paint wraps them in credibility. If we were to see them directly in Life magazine, which, along with Hollywood and advertising, is the catalyst for the construction of the greatest stereotypes about travel and exoticism in the 20th century, we would see how artificial the set is and we would somehow feel removed from these episodes of a few decades ago. Instead of helping foster emotions, the industry of the popular image tends to produce them ready-made, prompting an acritical, trivial and passive view of the world which is reduced to a few clichés that are easy to fit into a photo sequence or a film scene. These a la carte patterns generate visual and semiotic codes that define what is foreign based on a constant review of the clichés, most often from a perspective of superiority and feigned proximity. 

With painting, quite the opposite occurs: its timelessness requires deliberation and depth. It also makes it possible to sharpen the irony. It is to be read slowly and one must stop to examine the details in order to discover its true meaning, hidden below overlapping layers, like an archeological dig of a thousand-year-old city. Sometimes what is essential, the leitmotif, is buried under the surface, covered over by subsequent events. In Ángel Mateo Charris' series, one painting ends up being just the tip of the iceberg, the end of something, the objectualization of a process. ‘Los Mares del Tiki’ ['The Seas of Tiki'] began in 2013 and continued until the spring of 2016 in a cycle that came to an end with a group of small postcards on wood bearing writing on the back and a stamp as if they had been sent from some hypothetical spot called Tikiland, an imaginary place where the artist has been for the last three years. Once they are purchased, the buyer's name is added in, as if they had been sent to him or her. The last two paintings have an unusual format; they are two enormous tondi measuring two meters in diameter each: Holywood, a Tahiti landscape into which the sign over Hollywood Hills has been inserted, but with a deliberate spelling mistake, turning it into something like Holy Wood, a play on words that brings to mind a contradiction by reminding us of the entertainment society fostered by the movie industry while also spotlighting the respect owed to these Polynesian forests. The other, titled Tabú ['Taboo'], operates as a metaphorical closure; in the foreground we see an explorer (the artist's alter ego) waving goodbye with his arm raised as if he were greeting the viewer. What is striking is that the backpack he is wearing has been replaced by an easel/portable case like the ones used for plein air painting. The natives in the background are taken from a still from the film ‘Tabu’ (1931), directed by F. W. Murnau. The main character is part of another film of the same name, in tribute to the former, made in 2012 by the Portuguese director, Miguel Gomes. While it discusses forbidden love and colonialism, like the plot in Murnau's film, this one is different in that it is set in Africa. Interestingly, taboo is the most widely known word from the Polynesian language, a term that has been included in almost every language with the original meaning; as Charris himself admits… “the only word we have taken from Paradise is the one for something forbidden”. Like a set of Russian matryoshka dolls, where what we do not see is precisely what affords meaning to the results, in his work certain elements are supported by others so that implicit relationships are created that are not noticeable at first glance. This framework of interwoven ideas acts like an invisible net that provides substance to the overall discourse of the project.

When he starts in a seam that interests him, he digs as far as he can. He has a calm personality and is not easily upset, but his spirit is full of curiosity and restlessness. Actually, Charris works like a patient researcher who quietly and unhurriedly becomes steeped in a subject until he makes it his own. In this case, he even grew a long beard like a castaway on an island lost in the Pacific. His work is similar to that of an anthropologist, except that he has the advantage of coming from the creative world, a 'carte blanche' that allows him to take liberties and licenses. At the preliminary stage, he gathers diverse types of information and obsessively reads about the topic. This stage represents a warm-up until the engines are set in motion. He strives to undertake these faraway ventures sensibly, knowing where he is going but with no set target. In situations like this, it is best to go with the flow. Truly, he is a great thinker who writes profusely and incessantly. His notes and sketches, which are like a log book of his journeys, are a compilation of experiences and ideas that contain infinite clues to his work. In this notepad, which he has filled in during his spare time at the hotel or on trips by boat, he transcribes phrases read in books, makes sketches and maps, takes rough sketches from life, records strange phrases randomly heard, develops stories with and without morals, expresses feelings... The goal is to keep a detailed record of the expedition and add to the baggage of memories, an underlayer that will later somehow take seed in his paintings. In the locations he visits, he spontaneously takes photographs of whatever catches his eye for some reason. His way of seeing is general, aseptic, occasionally even distant. He acts like a notary that registers locations without any distinguishing features, aspects of the scenery or details about the plants that he later uses as the basis or foundations for an inscrutable action.  

 

His manner of painting is loose, faintly reminiscent of Hopper. He is not overly preoccupied with defining the figures' faces, as if he wanted to keep these anonymous beings that inhabit his canvases from being entirely specified. This vagueness transmits nostalgia and uncertainty; we are unsure about what is happening and what role the actors play in the composition, but there is something there that draws our attention. Regarding the vegetation in the background, he is sometimes swept along by the seductive color of the trees and bushes, the rhythm of the vegetation, allowing luxurious tones of grass or foliage to show through. One aspect that Charris deals with masterfully is the capacity to stratify the depth of the painting, establishing a clear path from the closeness of the foreground to the remotest elements, which, a very high percentage of the time, end up being cloudy skies at different times of the day. The meticulous combination of elements draws the viewer inevitably into the painting. His canvases have a certain cinematographic quality, like frozen time. They place us in the middle of a story that we don't know and must imagine. Their plot captivates us enough to keep us alert and expectant.

 

The attraction toward masks and primitive cultures has been a recurring theme in his work from the outset. In this regard, he admits: “when I was in New York for the first time, back in '88, one of the things that impressed me the most were the collections of primitive art at the Metropolitan. That's the thing about influences, they sometimes catch you when you least expect it and at the least convenient time. I have always been fascinated by these brutal synthetic creations, as was true with the avant-garde artists in their own time, and they have shown up in my work on numerous occasions. And without knowing it, I started making my own masks. With no preconceived plan or particular aspirations.” This fascination for the ancestral and for non-Western peoples occasionally emerges in his pieces. Not only masks appear, but also heads from Easter Island, the famous Moai, whose meaning is unknown, which may have been the door through which the artist reached the South Seas. It is interesting to note that on the different islands of Polynesia there is hardly any heritage, almost everything is short-lived and recent; they are a subsistence society. This feature inherent to the living conditions means that they are a people with short memories that easily forget the past. Most of their constructions are made of wood, a perishable material when exposed to the elements of a hostile climate where cyclones and typhoons are common. Except for the monolithic faces sculpted in stone by the Rapa Nui, little else remains of this magnitude. What has been preserved are statues of varying sizes resembling humans, most of them carved, that go by the name of Tiki. In Polynesian mythology, Tiki is the first man or god the creator, although its meaning changes depending on the island or region. In general, they represent protective spirits and can range, according to the circumstances, from petroglyphs sculpted in stone to body tattoos.

 

His first painting in this series is a Christmas greeting titled, precisely, Merry Christmas (2013). In the image, we see a melancholic view of an empty swimming pool in winter while a boy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a Santa Claus hat absently plays the electric guitar.  After that, he immersed himself and mentally prepared to make the journey to Oceania, and then did so up to three times over this period, to live an adventure of initiation. One of his aims was to verify how true the mythology created about this place is. As Jaume Vidal Oliveras notes, “with Charris, adventure, travel and paint merge and become one.” He was exceedingly interested in finding out what this alleged Paradise was like, where figures such as Paul Gauguin or Robert L. Stevenson ended up trapped, in a kind of escape forward or return to the origin. There, he found that what reaches us is a shadow influenced by tourism and wrapped in what the West has deemed exoticism should be like, but which is far from the reality. One of the issues that had the greatest impact on Charris was noting that, in general, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the islands were obese, a silhouette that does not match the attractive, well-defined racial body standards exported to us.  Certainly, the United States has played an important role in this manipulation, by distorting it according to its tastes and needs, to the point of creating a parallel culture inspired above all by certain Hawaiian traditions which they designated as Tiki and which have replaced the original in our imagination. 

 

Tiki culture emerged at a themed bar in Los Angeles called Don the Beachcomber, which was opened by Ernest Raymond Beaumont-Gantt in 1933. The owner, a chancer and former bootlegger during the Prohibition years, had sailed the South Pacific and had imitated, in his own way, or invented, everything he felt to be characteristic of those tropical locations. The atmosphere in the place combined ukulele music and folk music from Tahiti, lit torches, brightly colored fabrics with palm and coconut tree patterns, wicker or bamboo furniture, sculptures and masks. When you walked in, flower garlands were placed around your neck and unusual food with pineapple and coconut was served. The most popular part were the cocktails, served in Tiki totem-shaped mugs decorated with a tiny paper umbrella. The main ingredient was rum, the drink of pirates and ports. The bar immediately grew popular, especially amongst certain Hollywood celebrities. People came to get away, to leave their daily routines behind, surrounded by beautiful, scantily clothed, constantly smiling waitresses. In a short time, a successful restaurant chain was established, which spanned the country in the '40s and '50s. Just as quickly, imitators sprang up everywhere, the most famous of which was the Trader Vic chain, originally from San Francisco Bay. Tiki culture became so ingrained in mid-20th century America that it represented a complete stimulus that pervaded every aspect of daily life, from cuisine to architecture. As occurred so often, after World War II it spread to other parts of the world. One of the largest and most representative canvases in the series is precisely an image of this first Beachcomber, to which masks from the Quai Branly Museum in Paris have been added (Beachcomber, 2015). The perspective is highly cinematographic, as if it were a traveling shot approaching the scene in order to orient the viewer. Other works also use this panoramic format, making it easier to read from one side to the other. 

 

Amongst these horizontal paintings, certain ones stand out, like Los saqueadores ['The Looters'] (2014). Set in a landscape of Nuku Hiva, the largest of the Marquesas Islands, the artist has arranged sculptures from Brancusi's studio and two incongruous explorers oblivious in their musings to what is going on around them. The allusion to avant-garde Paris is evident, especially the influence that the Trocadero Ethnography Museum had on some of these artists who rejected Academicism and threw themselves into primitive art. Extraños en el Paraíso ['Strangers in Paradise'] (2015) is a more topical piece. A surprising group of Arab women wearing burkas strolls along a beach on Bora Bora. It is common knowledge that some of the propaganda videos distributed by ISIS use suggestive images of Polynesia to recreate the promised Eden. Jihadists have resorted to the use of Western imagery to illustrate their message, an inconsistency that deconstructs their religious orthodoxy and the credibility of their messages.

 

The rage for Tiki esthetics reached Spain in the '70s; the fad first took hold in Barcelona, and then spread south along the Mediterranean coast. In Cartagena there was also a bar of this kind quite close to the town hall, the Waikiki. In opened in 1975 and remained in business for twenty-five years. For a time, Charris was a regular at this peculiar pub, a lively spot, where the fact that some of the mugs with strange faces were so well-done drew his attention. Not long ago, he discovered that they were made by a family business based in Toledo, Porcelanas Pavón, which has a factory in Borox and is specialized in this type of ceramics. Since they use traditional methods, they have become a global benchmark and export most of their production. The quirks of globalization. In some of the paintings, these peculiar Polynesian cups from Borox are used as a strange sort of prop (En el ferry [On the Ferry], 2015) and in others they take center stage (Vaso I y II [Cup I and II], 2015).

As one long, vertical canvas portraying a rusty mask from an old Tiki hotel clearly shows us, nowadays the South Seas are a fake, a total fraud. In order to be accepted and more successful, that which is 'native' has ended up imitating the fake, thus finding a consumer niche that perpetuates it and at the same time is destroying its idiosyncrasy. Wild nature with emerald waters and dream-like atolls has inevitably been replaced by luxury resorts. In an increasingly commercial world where leisure time has become an international business, Paradise has been reduced to a device for making a profit and swindling tourists. Rather than an early Eden, this is its glorification. Paradise as an imitation of Paradise.