FERRARA,
EXHIBITION MAGICA. LA MAGIA DELL'ARTE
Rassegna
Internazionale d'Arte Contemporanea Ferrara/Italia
Castello Estense Sale dell'Imbarcadero, Ferrara, Novembre 2002
ALAIN MIEG
Alain Mieg is a young Swiss artist who currently lives and works in Lenzburg, near Zurich. He's one of those artists who completely dedicates themselves to the pictorial art, as art and life are in an absolute harmony.
He has exhibited in many solo-shows, not only in several Swiss cities but also in Argentina. When we observe the suggestive Alain Mieg's canvas of large dimensions, it's like facing endless horizons that seem reproducing well specific places, landscapes and views but they actually are creations of an oneiric and ecstatic journey, during which, the author makes himself feel freely transported with all his senses, in a frame of mind close to the trance state.
Describing the process through which he obtains his own works, the author says there are situations and landscapes that come from dream of places where he has been or where he would like to be and he can even feel the smell and the music of these places. These dreams come true in visions that appear to his eyes, with defined colours and smells. Sky, sun, wind, earth are in perfect harmony to each other and they constitute the main elements that bring the artist during this travel towards another world, different from the real one, quieter and yet only apparently distant. For the artist "the sky symbolizes freedom and struggling desire for life" and melancholy is a "faithful friend" to his side.
Alain Mieg's works arise from an intensive and natural meditation on what remains behind any possible horizon and they ask viewers to abandon their fantasy to these infinite and depth horizons. Spectators travel towards unreal places along the same trip that have brought the author to realize his works and to find a place where he could refuge in.
Alain Mieg's paintings became early independent from the first impressionist influences of Cézanne and Claude Monet; now, in fact, they reveal all the author's sensibility and love towards the uncontaminated nature, getting close to William Turner and Mark Rothko.
The power of the colour in his picture emanate a deeply mystic energy: spread by wide chromatic layers, the colours play very much on shading off and on the tonal variations that dominate the paintings; its result is the creation of separated horizontal bands of colour. For example, the work titled "Sehnsucht", that is painted in black blues and greys, seems forebode the upcoming of something ominous, but yet without being gloomy and desolated. "Sommerfrische", on the other hand, proposes bright accents of colours, conferring a sensation of luminosity and warmth to the canvas.
It's impossible to include under a single term these paintings of strong visual impact that can't be defined nor figurative or abstract or narrative but as mystic product by the journeys of a dreamy mind.
Paola Trevisan