One of the enduring challenges facing contemporary artists is maintaining the will to work from the inside out, to pursue their own aesthetic instincts while avoiding the lure of trendy styles.
Tampa painter Edgar Sanchez Cumbas fits this paradigm perfectly.
His current exhibition, which just opened at Ybor's Brad Cooper Gallery, consists of paintings and mixed-media drawings, the latest in his evolving series centered around an unconventional figure posing as a stand-in for the artist's alter ego.
Complex central themes trace the way Cumbas' outer experiences reflect on his inner life. When he speaks of an invasion into the sanctuary of his Seminole Heights home, of pure terror, we understand intuitively that real fear expands daily into global concepts. His fears come perilously close to ours. Real or imagined.
In order to project these personal/universal narratives, he situates his little character within recognizable or abstracted landscape elements, loosely based on his fascination with 17th-century Chinese landscape forms (gnarled trees, flat-top plateaus, etc.). He's also revived the vessel, a symbol he first used in his last series, The Insomniacs, as a visual motif representing sanctuary. He occasionally adds his little white dog, Pearl, representing attachment or responsibility. A few small monkeys add a touch of exotic flavor to the wonderful drawings of his dark-robed figures. In this artist's visual language, monkeys symbolize the unexpected, a perfect choice to convey the fear factor.
While all of these components might suggest the formulaic, the painter's work is anything but.
Cumbas' art draws from his ability to burrow deep into his own psyche and convert these psychological impulses and wounds into visual realities and metaphors. This doesn't set him apart from legions of other artists intent on exposing their inner selves. But fortunately he has a lot more up his aesthetic sleeve than releasing the kind of private, powerful, gut-wrenching angst of, for example, Francis Bacon, an artist Cumbas admires.
At this stage of his career, Cumbas is smart in avoiding the pitfalls of over-personalizing his personal message.
His universalizing mechanism centers on the little robed character who cavorts in and around imaginary landscapes, "a symbol of me in my own environment," Cumbas says. The robe still signifies the insomniac, based on the artist's own dilemma. Now bulked-up from his earlier form, the creature is still not quite a warm fuzzy, though his expressions of vulnerability make him oddly endearing as he reappears in a variety of poses. In "Last Man Standing," an ironic title for a figure crouched close to the ground, he's huddled within his long garment, his hands clasped to the side of his head. A single Oriental-style tree branch does little to protect the pained fellow from the weight of a dangerous world. To counterbalance lurking terror, the artist surrounds him, paradoxically, with a minimally painted beautiful blue sky.
Sometimes only eyes and part of the face stare out from the painted luan panel Cumbas uses instead of canvas, as, for example "Las Colossos II," where the face peers out from the side of a vessel. The impact of these partial faces or eyes is less strong than the full figures, though "Fall" (2002), a beautifully composed mystical painting with eyes cast on the viewer, is ironically one of the best works in the show. Circling linear strands lead us through a spatial vortex of blues and deliver us to the safe central area. Here, the gaze of a hidden face oversees a vessel filled with a miniature landscape. The effect is pure magic.
When I first noticed this young painter's work about four years ago, his Victims and Giants series exhibited some of the same wonderfully rich coloration he's using today. "All Latino artists are attracted to rich color," the Puerto Rico-born, New York-raised artist said when I asked about the influence of his heritage on his art. Aside from seductive color, the faces bordered on caricature. Still, their appeal and memorability factor were strong enough motivation for me to keep an eye on this artist and anticipate more of his work. I have not been disappointed.
Presumably, some of Cumbas' early choices grew out of his years at the Savannah College of Art and Design where his studies centered on editorial illustration. In his final year, after favorable faculty recognition, he switched to painting, minored in art history, and graduated with honors.
From those early works, I was pleased to see Cumbas' little fellows evolving into The Insomniacs. Originally based on the artist's own bout with sleep deprivation, they have now become a "symbol of our general mentality, people on the go." Their recent interaction with the vessel motifs occurred after the artist began observing shipyard containers in Tampa's Channelside district. If you look closely, many of his vessels maintain an angular configuration patterned after these containers.
Vessels also have long and complex art historical associations. As ancient artifacts, they're a staple of anthropological or art exhibitions. In Voces y Visiones, the current TMA show, they're encased in glass in the main gallery where they announce Latino cultural origins. Art history doesn't stop there; vessels were endowed with profound 20th-century associations after feminist pronouncements that women had long been reduced to mere vessels for male satisfaction.
Cumbas is negotiating alternative interpretations. In his hands, the vessel symbolizes private sanctuary for himself and his character. In the recent works the vessel and landscape often fuse, as in "Last Man Standing" or "Pressed," where the character actually becomes the landscape. His monumentalized form and tiny head are pressed into the safety zone of excavated land, now transformed into an earthen vessel. The tiny figure of Pearl rests on his master's knee.
Though the painter's forms are based on Chinese landscapes, his renewed interest in landscape was spurred when he visited Seattle and viewed miniature Vietnamese landscapes (HON Non Bo) grown in small pots. In his hands, these environments function as outdoor stage sets, thus grounding the little wandering protagonist with elements of reality, albeit artificially constructed.
Cumbas explored some of these aesthetic motivations and choices during the well-attended opening night artist's talk and dialogue at Brad Cooper Gallery. Such bonus events are fast becoming marvelous additions to our entire cultural scene. My advice is to take advantage of these freebies, support our artists, and by all means, keep an eye on the evolving career of Edgar Sanchez Cumbas.
Adrienne M. Golub can be reached by e-mail at randagolub@aol.com.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2003.
