THE CREATION
Solo exhibition, curated by Conchi Alvarez.
Stoa Art Gallery is presently exhibiting Allan Neff´s paintings for the very first time.
On first contact with his work, the initial impression was that of an archeologist coming across a precious treasure… it simply dazzled us. The discovery had a considerably larger impact due to the fact that Allan is a true Renaissance artist, not only because of his vaste artistic range: painting, sculpture, writing, music…, but also owing to his lifetime dedication to art, his passion, under the wholehearted patronage of Carmen, his wife. Since the Renaissance is revered and adored in our Gallery, we are ecstatic about this exhibition.
The exceptional nature of this show lies in its retrospective character, since it spans the years between 1992 and 2006. We are thus exhibiting almost the entirety of Allan´s work, as if he had sensed our encounter as a premonition and had jealously kept it hidden just for us to stumble upon. The show is equally out of the ordinary thanks to the luxury of having the artist himself complementing each painting with a text in which he bares out his deepest creative process. It´s a total of 24 pictures, acrylic on canvas or burlap. Those pertaining to the series on Adam and Eve -still unfinished- are worth mentioning as powerfully outstanding.
Although I may not look the part, I’m a débutante, this exhibition being my “coming out ” party. Conchi Álvarez, the director of the gallery STOA, likened the idea to the metamorphosis of a butterfly, with me having been locked inside my cocoon only to finally emerge, bursting with colour and displaying my own intricate design. It’s a pleasant image, and I can appreciate the comparison, however, it’s not really the metaphor I would have chosen for myself.
She also made an allusion to the monastic way of life. This analogy I find much more satisfying. Not for any religious reasons or in any religious sense, but simply because there is a similarity in the daily work habits and disciplinary attitude of monks with those of my own. It’s this rather mundane behaviour within a certain spacial setting which tends to relate my creative life style with theirs: the obedience to routine on the one hand and a meditative solitude on the other. I imagine this holds true for most painters in general. When I’m in my working environment, in front of the canvas, I might as well be locked far away behind monastery walls. The outside world no longer exists. There’s just me and the work at hand. My mind focuses entirely on the the work of art. There’s the contemplation of the object and the meditation on the idea of the object, along with the physical movement over the object itself. A curious fact is that this focused contemplation, this meditation (or concentration, if you will) of the artist, runs parallel with that of the monk in the sense that it’s “circular”, it begins and ends with the individual, it’s something conjured up and all within the individual’s mind, or, perhaps, the mind’s vision. The work on the canvas which I contemplate is in fact a reflection of myself, or at least a fragment of myself, since it has originated from an abstract concept of my own making. The interchange between what’s on the canvas and what isn’t and what still needs to be placed there and my thoughts is simply a type of visual-talking to oneself. This may seem odd but that’s certainly the way it is, for the final picture, the painting that the viewer will look at, the one that you will see and hopefully scrutinize, is in reality nothing more than a tangible version of my original mental conception placed within a frame and hung on a wall.
Some auto-biographical facts:
See the catalogue “…The Creation…”