| 布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）在创作形式和技法上崇尚自由，他不会拘泥于某一种创作方法或是意识形态， 但是他认为作品应是富于思想的，因此他的大多数作品反映了他对艺术，艺术创作和20世纪末殖民统治，奴隶制后的民族身份重建问题的关注。他的作品是以事件为题材的，但又不被事件所缚，而是在觅求诊察20世纪末期的重要社会政治问题，在创作形式上，他形成自己的艺术词汇和审美观来共同构成具有强大表现力的视觉语言，这些使他能够在当代艺术舞台占有一席之地。我接下来对他的两个系列“自行车之旅”和我们共同商议出的“金字塔和蛋 ——O的旅程”的评论以及我对他在上个世纪的最后20年的作品和他取得的进步的理解也是从这两个层面展开的。
自行车之旅和“金字塔与蛋”—— O的旅程皆以旅行为题材，从不同侧面表现了布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）对“旅途”的理解。在第一个系列中，自行车这一形象是中国在历史长河中的漫长旅途和它在国际舞台上的奋力冲刺的隐喻。而后者则表现了他对金字塔所代表的人类早期文明的稳定性和当代文明的多变性的关联的审视和思考。稳定与改变就是一个不断形成与消散的循环过程。虽然自行车，金字塔，鸡蛋这些与旅途有关的元素来自于他在中国的经历，然而事实上这些寓意深刻的主题已经在他心中酝酿良久了。我会在我的评论中对此作出解释。
从某种意义上讲，“无归之门（Door of No Return）”可以看做是布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）此次展览全部作品的序言。布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）二十多年里创作的所有意像和主题，都被置于这幅作品的灵化空间中，这幅作品可以看做是他在中国之旅所产生的，至少是所加强的新的创作灵感的基础。在黑人的文化背景中，“无归之门（Door of No Return）”引起他们对塞内加尔西部沿海戈雷（GOREE）湾西岸达喀尔港上这个声名狼藉的奴隶之房（House of Slaves）的回忆。几百年前，被贩卖的奴隶囚禁与此，这里是他们对故乡的最后一瞥。这扇门通向未知的痛苦，考验他们的身体和心智，但是在此磨练出的坚强意志和丰富的想象力又会开启一个新纪元。也许通过后一层含义，我们可以更深刻的体会到布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）绘画的浓厚思想，因为尽管这扇门并不在戈雷（Goree），但它同样通向未知。
画面的右半部分被巨大的拱形结构圈住，一个巨穴似的拱形空间以科林斯式风格柱子封顶。左半部一条楣石横在画面上方。这样的拱形结构在画面中还有两处，其一是哥特式彩绘玻璃窗，其二是伸向远处渐渐消逝的路。哥特式彩色玻璃窗深色窗楞勾勒出的花式窗格可以追溯到布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）几年前的巴西之旅后创作的一个系列。巴西古老的教堂中，阳光通过彩色的玻璃窗流入阴暗的古老教堂，他被这样的庄严深深的吸引。教堂内部的阴暗因为人类的历史而变得沉重，这里有过奴隶制，有过非洲人民对古老宗教以及逐渐被他们接受的基督教的虔诚和热衷。
不久，马克法兰（McFarlane）又对土耳其的教堂和清真寺表现出了同样的热情，钟情于充满生活灵性的古代风俗。不管是巴西，还是土耳其，所有的建筑都是结构宏伟，光束透过高窗，跳动的烛光和灯笼映照壁翕。马克法兰（McFarlane）将堆成金字塔状的球体并在后期作品中将鸡蛋置于这样的背景中，以此达到从建筑环境到一个更不确定的不被自然法则束缚的空间的转变。
在“鸡蛋空间的玄学”（Metaphysics of Egg Space）中，这种转变更为明显。在这幅作品中，画面中有两个房间，他们相互映照，又相互背驰，但是都拥有相似的元素。两个房间中都有若干长凳的形象。长凳的形象来自他的童年经历，那时，他的父亲给了他一个小的长凳。祈祷蜡烛被放在玻璃杯中，或是其他灯笼中，马克法兰（McFarlane）用此来表现“永恒的希望”。画面中一些盆子和碗等器皿似乎盛满了液体，是纯净的甘泉，又或者是洗礼的圣水。拱形结构依稀可见，但是他们不再是理性的占据空间，而是，堆积在一起，有时甚至是在泰然的流动。后面我会具体讨论这两联作品中鸡蛋的含义。两联作品唯一的区别就是他们的色调，一边是青烟似的蓝色和灰色，反衬了另一边的夹杂着橘色和黄色的赭色。“玄学（Metaphysics）”是以马克法兰（McFarlane）自己的经历作为参考点，来体现他对生活的精神冥想。
“无归之门”（Door of No Return）中出现的炮弹堆在“未爆炸的炮弹” （Unexploded Ordnance）中有了更充分体现，画面的主体是一堆炮弹。如此绝妙正式的形象究竟意味着什么？马克法兰（McFarlane）试图通过这些炮弹让我想到殖民主义，尤其美洲殖民主义所造成的恶果，以及他本人在1962年牙买加独立后的成长经历。在他的作品中，马克法兰（McFarlane）只是通过炮身和炮弹来表现大炮这个主题。他们比其他的任何东西更能体现持续几个世纪的横渡大西洋的奴隶交易中西方强大的军事力量。正是这些炮弹使得欧洲的堡垒，炮台得以在留存在非洲的土地上，正是这些炮弹使得欧洲国家在争夺加勒比，南北美洲的殖民地的战争中斡旋。每一片殖民地上，岛屿或是内陆，都布满了炮台，炮身和整齐排列成金字塔状的炮弹。炮弹表现了殖民主义和奴隶制在美洲持续到20世纪中叶的必然性。
在“未爆炸的炮弹”（Unexploded Ordnance）这幅作品中，有三个主要原色，他们是让我们想到马克法兰（McFarlane）的成长经历和殖民地背景的长凳是其一，炮管指向观众的大炮，和画面中心垒成金字塔状的黑色的白色的炮弹是其二，一些鸡蛋隐藏在画面中，与炮弹的坚硬形成了鲜明的对比，这是其三。炮身在“未爆炸的炮弹”的位置引出了炮弹的另一层含义。如果从一个层面上讲炮身和弹药象征殖民主义，在另一个层面上，他们也体现了另一个潜在的，应该说是必然的结果，那就是爆炸。殖民主义和奴隶制在他们所在的历史时期激起了被压迫者的愤怒。这些愤怒中的大部分一只郁积到现在社会，内部的愤怒就如同没有爆炸炮弹威胁着现在社会，这似乎是一个颠倒的政治过程。一触即发的爆炸随时可能发生黑人社会，尽管他们生活在富有，先进的西方社会，因为他们生活在他们的祖先创造的财富当中，却只能望洋兴叹，可以说，这些炮弹和随时准备开火的炮管就在这些黑人的子孙心中。
“未爆炸的炮弹”（Unexploded Ordnance）中的鸡蛋的易碎性和炮弹隐含的爆炸是非常戏剧性的对比，这样的对比为我们提出了一个很难回答的问题：我们怎样才能令他们原封不动？鸡蛋是非常复杂的象征，所以我们必须从多个层面来理解它。也许它最基础的寓意就是对生命的孕育，或者说是起源和进化。在这个层面下，鸡蛋等待着成为新生命的养料。鸡蛋也象征这变换，从一个简简单单的卵变成复杂特殊，有着各种可能性的生命体。在另一个层面上，鸡蛋又在体现易碎性，它单薄的壳很容易被弄破。马克法兰（McFarlane）的鸡蛋包含了所有的含义。它象征了黑人在经历了奴隶制，殖民主义的严酷考验后的重生，通过他们的劳动，想象力和创造力对美洲所做的改变。他们通过智慧，睿智和毅力，以及他们从祖辈那里继承的勇猛，美洲的黑人得以代代延续。尽管有这样强大的力量，黑人依然是脆弱的团体，他们的雄心壮志被磨灭，因为种族歧视，习惯性歧视，和现在的法律障碍使他们失去了很多机会。鸡蛋和炮弹如同一个方程式的两边，一方面，他们体现了人类无限的想象力和智慧，另一方面，他们是奴隶制和殖民主义的压迫和深嵌在社会经济中的不公。
尽管“鸡蛋和未爆炸的炮弹”中保留了可以变别的形象，还是向我们提出了一些有趣的问题。在这幅作品中，马克法兰（McFarlane）没有构造立体空间，只是在画面的左面添加了炮身和长凳。 横竖线条分布在整个画面，似乎要为画面加上栅栏。这些线条使观众意识到画面本身，也使更多的球体出现在阴暗的画面，不管是鸡蛋，还是炮弹，又或者是水果。画面大部分运用暖色调，提高了画面的直观性，同时保留蓝色和灰色色点，色块的戏剧表现性。而且，马克法兰（McFarlane）冷暖色调共用和他构建画面空间的技法使这幅作品充满了活力。
“沸腾”（Boiling）这幅作品更为抽象，画家将实物鸡蛋大胆的处理成半透明的球体。在创作方法上明确看出，画家用简单的技法在长方形的画面中构建了一个立方体，在立方体中创造水沸腾后咕噜咕噜的运动效果。画面中没有严格的几何图形和锐利的轮廓，立方体由蓝色和灰色的线条构成，渐渐消逝的顶角和边缘处微泛绿或红，整个立方体如同一个水族箱，浮泛在一个广阔，含混得水汪汪的背景中。在这个箱子中，各色鸡蛋被沸水带动着浮浮沉沉。这个水中的半透明环境使马克法兰（McFarlane）能够神奇的通过鸡蛋表现的狂怒的能量，从而引起观众的兴趣。“轭和冷蛋”（Yoke and Cool Eggs）甚至更为抽象。同样是运用长方形画面，这两幅作品都让人联想到二十世纪中叶抽象表现主义者，他们运用淡淡的笔墨和颜色相近的大色块。马克法兰（McFarlane）将幻影般漂浮在空间中的鸡蛋与这样的视觉方法相结合。
当缓和时代在20世纪80年代来到美国时，人们对中国没有什么印象。也许广为人知的印象就是其自行车王国的形象。电视机芯片也许会向美国人展现的是中国的大街小巷挤满了骑着自行车的男男女女。因此，对大多数人来说，中国和自行车是不可分开的。在马克法兰（McFarlane）“自行车的旅行”这个系列中，自行车多次出现，这是马克法兰（McFarlane）对中国这段历史的向往，的确，马克法兰（McFarlane）将自行车看作是中国在历史长河中漫长旅途的隐语，同时对中国这个文明古国表示自己的崇敬。
像吉他一样，自行车在早期的西方现代艺术中运用广泛。费农.雷杰（Fernand Leger）的作品最能体现这一点。在他的作品中自行车支离破碎的散布在画面上。这种抽象的运用自行车的零件的画法在布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）的“破自行车”（Broken Bicycle）中也被运用。自行车的座椅，车锁，胎环，及轮胎随意的散布在画面上。 在“破自行车”（Broken Bicycle）中，这些元素重合，缠绕在一起，有时他们的形象与充满韵律的标记辉映，有时通过他们的轮廓打开新的抽象空间，比如作品右侧的平行线所构成的通道。和谐的颜色，相近的蓝色的重复运用，以及前面提到的抓破的条纹区域的运用是整幅画面保持完整。
在“自行车蓝调”（Bicycle Blues）中，条纹被不完整的漩涡代替，但相同的素材还在。多个座椅，胎环，辐条，模糊的骨架，锁，所有这些都在这幅蓝色的作品中共同展现被分解的自行车。题目有一点双关的色彩，蓝色是非常普遍的颜色，即使是自行车的碎片也变成了对自行车幻想曲的记忆。所以这个题目同时表现了画面中对蓝色的运用和对伤感的自行车的冥想。
“夜行者”（Night Rider）是此次展览中自行车题材作品中最抽象的一幅，也是最恐怖的一幅。深色画面似乎被抓破，更准确的说是被梳子划破，车轮和座椅半隐半现向我们暗示骑车人的存在。“夜行者”（Night Rider）令人感到沉重，阴暗，似乎要叫醒隐藏在黑暗中的邪恶。马克法兰（McFarlane）为这样的蠢蠢欲动罩上了朦胧的色彩，这样的静中展现了新兴国家人们生活手段的目的和用途的不确定性。
布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）的这些作品向我们展现了他的画家天赋。“自行车之旅”（Bicyclical Journeys）和“金字塔与蛋”-一个O的旅程（Pyramid and Eggs-A Circular Journey）来自于后殖民地时期在美洲的成长经历带给他的洞察力，也得益于他对中国和中国的变化的感受和反应。他的反应的复杂性是可以理解的，因为在从西方殖民主义瓦解到第二次世界大战后中国的兴起的过程中，布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）这一代人是具有多元性的。“自行车之旅”（Bicyclical Journeys）和“金字塔与蛋”-一个O的旅程（Pyramid and Eggs-A Circular Journey）对布莱恩•马克法兰（Bryan McFarlane）的绘画技巧的要求很高，但是他通过自己的方式创作了一套绘画语言在国际当代艺术舞台上表现他的激情。通过他的作品，当代艺术以及我们对当代艺术的理解会更加丰富。
Edmund Barry Gaither
馆长/策展人
美国马萨诸塞州，波士顿， 国家黑人艺术家博物馆
2008年2月
Comment on the exhibition of Bryan______Edmund Barry Gaither director of Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Bryan McFarlane does not approach his work with the idea of making it tightly programmatic, or of forcing it to adhere to a strict ideological iconography, Rather, he intents that his work should be rich in ideas, many of them rooted in his own concerns with art, art-making and post-colonial post-slavery identity construction as a central problem of modernism in the late 20th century. His work is interested in issues without being determined by issues. It seeks to simultaneously examine critical socio-political questions that define the last quarter century while evolving a formal vocabulary and a suite of aesthetic considerations that together constitute a powerfully expressive visual language. This is the demand imposed if he is to forge his own place in contemporary art. With that observation in mind, I offer a discussion of Bicycles,Pyramids and Egg Axis--A Circular Journey informed by our many conversations, and my close attention to his production and evolution over the last quarter century.
Bicycles,Pyramids and Egg Axis--A Circular Journey share the common reference to travel. Each documents visually a perspective that McFarlane has formed about “journeys”. In the former series, he focuses on the icon of the bicycle as a metaphor for China’s long journey through time and history including its present accelerated sprint onto the world stage. In the latter, he examines the relationship between fundamentals from early human civilization represented by the pyramid and the fragile of the contemporary that is, by its nature, in a state of perpetual genesis. He suggests that the conditions of stability and change are locked in a circular relationship of becoming and dissolving. Although the meaning bicycles, pyramids and eggs in these journey-related paintings grow out of McFarlane’s Chinese experiences, he has a longer history with these motifs in which a denser significance resides. I comment on both levels of meaning in my discussion.
Door of No Return provides, in a certain sense, a prologue for the works that make up the current exhibition of paintings by Bryan McFarlane. It is a summa in which the motifs and symbols that he has evolved over the last two decades are brought together within a highly spiritualized space, as if to provide the foundation for a new wave of icons derived from—or at least fortified by—his encounter with China. Within a black cultural context, Door of No Return recalls the infamous portal opening onto the Atlantic Ocean from the House of Slaves on the island of Goree in the harbor of Dakar, Senegal—the last door through which enslaved Africans passed on their way into slavery in the Americas. That door has come to symbolize the passage into unknowable ordeals that will try the body and transform the soul, but from which will and imagination will shape a new future. Perhaps it is in this latter sense that we should understand McFarlane’s richly iconographic painting, for though his is not Goree, it is nevertheless a passage into the unknown.
Framed by a great arch, a cavernous vaulted space opens revealing on the right a column capped by a Corinthian capital, and to the left a second column on which a lintel rests spanning the top of the picture. The arch is repeated twice more prominently, once as a Gothic stained glass window and again as the opening to a passageway that disappears in the depths. The image of the Gothic stained glass window with its dark hints of tracery harks back to the series of painting made by McFarlane after travels in Brazil many years ago. In the Brazilian series, he was fascinated by the majesty of colored light that streamed into the dim interiors of centuries old churches across in cities such as Salvador in Bahia. The interiors felt heavy with the residue of human history, having witnessed slavery, and the African’s devotion to their own ancient gods as well as to those of Christianity that some had come to accept. Later, McFarlane responded with similar fascination when he visited churches and mosques in Turkey, again struck by the sense of antiquity tinged by a living spirituality. Both the Brazilian and the Turkish interiors retained grandeur captured in their scale, and articulated by the beams of colored light filtering through their great clerestories, and enhanced by the flickering candles and lamps that illuminate the black recesses of the chambers. Into this setting, McFarlane introduces pyramids of stacked spheres that suggest the growing importance of cannon ball ordnance and eggs in later works, thus providing a transition from architectonic environments toward a more ambiguous spatial approach in which forms are less tightly governed by natural laws.
In Metaphysics of Egg Space, the aforementioned transition is advanced. In this diptych, the panels constitute two interiors that simultaneously mirror and contradict each other. Both share the same or similar motifs, for example, McFarlane places benches in each interior. The bench is an image taken from his childhood experiences with his father who provided him with his own little one. McFarlane has also placed votive candles in glasses and other lamps on both sides evoking the idea of the lamp eternal. Vessels and basins balance along the central spine suggesting containment, pure water and perhaps even baptism. Hints of arches abound, but all of these objects no longer exist in a purely rational space, but rather, they stack and sometimes float with impunity. And finally, both panels have egg forms that tie to notions that I will discuss later. The principal way in which the sides of the diptych differ is in their palette where one is rendered in smoky blues and grays that appear as highlights in its opposite, while the other is ochre with flashes of orange and yellow that similarly recur as highlights on the left. The ultimate disposition of Metaphysics is as a meditation of spiritual icons that mediate life, using McFarlane’s own experiences as points of reference.
The pyramids of ordinance suggested in Door of No Return are fully realized in Unexploded Ordnance where the dominant image is a stack of cannon balls. What is the meaning of this exceptionally elegant and highly formal composition? McFarlane ask us to ponder ordinance as a symbol of colonialism, particularly as it played out in the Americas and in his own formative experience coming as it does in the immediate aftermath of Jamaica’s independence in l962. Ordnance refers to military weapons systems including supplies such as bullets. In his iconography, McFarlane features only one system of ordnance—the cannon and cannon balls. More than any other, cannon and cannon balls represent the state of Western military might over the centuries of the transatlantic slave trade during which European nations established colonies in the Americas. It was cannon power that secured the European forts on African soil, and that mediated battles between European countries competing for colonial primacy in the Caribbean, South and North America. Every island and mainland colony was home to one or more forts ringed with cannons planted between neatly stacked pyramids of cannon balls easily available in the event of challenges. Cannons and their ordnance represented the enforcement of the status quo within slave-holding colonies, and that status quo survived the ending of slavery itself and remained in place well into the mid-20th century in much of the Americas.
Three motifs predominate in Unexploded Ordnance. They are the presence of several benches that refer to McFarlane himself as well as to the larger place of work within colonial settings, the presence of cannons with their barrels pointing toward the viewers, and the presence of the tiered pyramid of black and white cannon balls at the painting’s center. Almost hidden are several eggs that contrast sharply with the hardness of the balls, and offer a secondary motif in the work. Placement of the cannons in Unexploded Ordnance suggests another meaning for the cannon balls. If the cannons and their ammunition represent colonialism at one lever, at another they represent the potential—indeed the inevitability—of explosions. Colonialism and slavery engendered great anger at the perpetrators of oppression during the relevant historical periods, and much of that anger remains pent-up in post-colonial post-slavery communities today. The internalization of rage is the unexplored ordnance that imperils urban communities and threatens to upend political progress to the presence. These forces of impending explosion exist within communities of color that are themselves in some of the richest and most privileged of Western societies. The unexploded ordnance symbolized by the cannon balls and cannons pointed outward is now in the breast of the descendants of the exploited who live amid wealth created by their forebears but unavailable to them.
Unexploded Ordnance with Eggs contrasts dramatically the implicit threat of explosions with the fragility of eggs, posing for us the difficult question, how can we keep things intact? Eggs are a potent and multifaceted symbol, and thus must be approached as in terms of layers of meaning. Perhaps its most fundamental symbolism is as a sign of potential life, that is, of genesis. In this context, the egg awaits fertilization whereupon it becomes new life. Eggs may also represent transformation, because what begins as a simple ovoid becomes a complex and extraordinary organism of dramatic possibilities. In yet another frame, an egg may express fragility, for its thin shell is easily broken or crushed. Within our broader argument, McFarlane’s eggs partake of all of these meanings, suggesting the new life of black people who survived the ordeal of the Middle Passage, slavery and colonialism, to transform the Americas with their labor, imagination and creativity. By their wit, intelligence and perseverance, and of course by the generations that have flowed from their loins, black people in the Americas have been progenitors of the new. Despite such a declaration of strength, black communities have also been fragile, always in danger of having their aspirations crushed or their opportunities blocked by racism, customary discrimination and until recently, legal barriers. The egg and the cannon ball are two sides of the same equation: for on one hand lies the infinite potential of human imagination and intelligence, and on the other are the repressive forces born of slavery and colonialism and embedded in social and economic injustice.
Unexploded Ordnance with Eggs, though retaining recognizable images, poses several interesting formal problems. In it, McFarlane has avoided constructing deep space preferring instead to imply only modest intrusions, such as with the cannon and the bench on the left. Vertical and horizontal lines overlay the entire pictorial plane as if to establish a grid for the cartoon of a mural. This grid tends to make the viewer hyper aware of the surface itself. It also tends to locate the profusion of spheres, whether eggs, cannon balls, or perhaps fruits, in very shallow space. The warm colors throughout most of the painting further heighten its surface immediacy while dramatizing the few remaining spots and bands of blues and gray. Together, McFarlane’s hot/cold palette combined with the devices employed to render pictorial space lend tremendous visual vitality to this work.
Considerable more abstract is Boiling, a painting where the ostensive subject, boiling eggs, is clearly secondary to the formal adventures presented by mastering translucencies. Compositionally direct, Boiling uses exceedingly simple devices to create the impression of a cube within a square, and to further convey the impression of bubbling movement with the cube. Eschewing strict geometry or sharp delineation, the cube is created by soft bands of blue, blue-green or red that approximates the receding top and sides of a clear box—a sort of aquarium. This box floats in an indeterminate watery expanse. Within the box, eggs of various colors rise and fall as if animated by the action of boiling water. The submarine translucent environment provides the opportunity for McFarlane to tease the viewer with his ability to evoke the energy of a tempest strangely manifested with eggs. Abstraction is even greater in the paintings Yoke and Cool Egg. Using the square format noted in Boiling, these canvases call to mind mid-20th century Abstract Expressionists who sometimes used thinly painted washes or broad color bands set against closely related color fields. To these visual strategies McFarlane has added ghost images of just a few eggs floating in space. The resulting paintings are quiet and deeply spiritual in their feeling.
When the era of détente arrived in the United States in the l980s, only a few impressions of China were widespread. Perhaps the most ubiquitous image of China was as a land of bicyclists. A television clip might show a view of a Chinese city with its streets a flood of men and women on bicycles. So to many, China and the bicycle were inseparable. McFarlane gives a bow in the direction of this popular image of China with his frequent use of the bicycle as a motif in Bicyclical Journeys. Indeed, McFarlane treats the bicycle as a metaphor for China’s long journey throughout history, honoring the fact that China is one of the oldest of world civilizations.
The bicycle, like the guitar, is a common motif in early Western modern art. This is no where more evident than in the prints and paintings of Fernand Leger, where elements of bicycles are employed as graphic fragments freely floated over fields of color. This abstract handling of bike parts emerge in paintings such as McFarlane’s Broken Bicycle with its random references to bike seats, wheel locks, rims and tires. Broken Bicycle overlaps and intertwines these elements sometimes echoing their shapes with rhythmic markings, and sometimes using their outlines to open up new areas of abstraction, as in the case of the parallel striated passages in the right portion of the painting. Unity is retained throughout the work by the careful balance of harmonious colors, frequent repetition of closely related blues as well as the profusion of scratched areas that relate to the aforementioned striations.
Striation is replaced by partial swirls of the palette knife in Bicycle Blues, where otherwise many of the same motifs are present. Multiple passenger seats, rims sometimes with spokes, hints of frames, axels and locks all evoke the present of disassembled bikes almost magically caught up in a plane of vibrant blue paint. As the title suggests—half punning—blue is the prevalent color, even as the fragmentation of the bicycle shifts toward memory of bicycles as perhaps reverie, a variant of the “blues”. The title thus refers to both the emphatic use of the color blue as well as musing about bikes in the sense of having the “blues”.
Night Rider is the most abstract of the bike motif canvases in the show. It is also the most ominous. Rendered almost monochromatically, its dark surface has been scraped, or maybe combed is more accurate, revealing the half hidden images of the machine’s turning wheels along with it seat, and a very obscured suggestion of a rider. The mood evoked by Night Rider is heavy and brooding as if to recall some terror veiled by darkness. McFarlane cast a pall over this symbol of mobility whose pervasive occurrence in emerging countries is omnipresent underscoring the ambiguity surrounding the purpose and uses of the most common devices in our lives.
Bryan McFarlane has put forward a collection of works that attest to his genius as a painter. While providing insights into his thinking as a man shaped in the post-colonial caldron of the Americas, Bicyclical Journeys and Pyramid and Eggs—A Circular Journey document his response to and reflections on China and its dynamism. The complexity of his response is logical since there are many parallels in his generation between the collapse of the Western colonial order and the rise of post-World War II China. Bicyclical Journeys and Pyramid and Eggs—A Circular Journey testifies to McFarlane’s mastery of technical and conceptual skills, which he has pushed in his own way to create a pictorial vocabulary capable of expressing his passions forcefully within the arena of international contemporary art. For his contribution, contemporary art, and our encounters with it, are richer.
Edmund Barry Gaither
Director/curator
Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
February 2008 |
