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Harold Dessalines or Colours Dreams

Exposed to the difficulties of a process wich had beome less pretentious, less fadish with tourist curios, more demanding with regard to formalism, the latest generation of Haitian artists, those of the nineteen nineties, has been, more than the others, animated by a determination for more openness and renewal, rupturing at times brutally with a past to wich a return would be impossible, a past in wich the details seemed immovable. The discussions were centered at first on the formalism "Ecole de la Beaute" and how to get away from it. And in response, the attraction to an intellectual Surrealisme, that of Photorealism, or something geometrically abstract or informal-and why not? "Installations".

Admittedly there were uncertainties, rejections and steps backward. And, conversions. For the moment, the "Installations" to Haitians public seemed artificial. The abstract was resented as being alien to the Haitian mentality. Before accepting it, a long road had to be traveled. Therefore, Surrealisme and Photorealism were here to stay.

Where is Harold Dessalines placed? He is certainly not one of those, who in order to gain attention, throws color for better or worse on the canvas resulting in compositions wich are more or less doubtful. Neither is he among those who believes in an exact and objective portrayal of an object. Who lets himself be tempted by a photographic vision. He is not in favor so to speak of any reproduction too faithful, without the aspect of soul and without soul.

In the begening, everything seemed oriented towards Photorealism and this movement seemed promising. The reception of its vision, the precision and distinctness of its lines wich permitted it to seize and express faithfully the finest detail, gave the images an astonishing resemblance but not without a certain mistery. Already also, the poetry of its compositions of color, contradicted the quest for the real, giving to its style a particular accent and proposed a world wich was more dreamlike than perceived.

Photorealism was at a stage where it was rapidly moving beyond the horizons. Its preocupations where other ones, wich assumed the real only to transcend it, broke with the limitations of the true-to-life and realized the weird. It lingered on shaping and finishing the simple but audacious still lifes in the making the symbols question and understand. As much as possible, his obscure landscapes are bathed in an unreal light, wich borders on the fairy-like. And everywhere, there is a disquieting silence, woven of the unspoken.

The treatment of objects, its sense of what is right, the sumptuousness of colors, had not gone unnoticed among the Formalist. But here again, the intentions were different. There was an internal nervousness wich preceded and justified the explosions and concentrated at times in voluntary smudges of color. And one sensed immediately that the ample play of forms was only a lure to keep us outside of the brutality of the dreams and to divert us from the real questions. The more it advanced the more it elsewhere failed at holding the silences.

As unobstrusive as they are, the strangeness of the still-lifes is inescapable. The assorted objects gathered together on a table, or in the form of a cross. Objects wich often changed meaning when not in the context of nature. The gourde became a flower pot and the flower a flame of a candlestick. What role did the newspapers play? Certainly not to inform us or remind us. Everything seems impregnated wich savage mysticism moving sometimes towards an esoteriscism within a complete ambiguity of all the chosen elements.

This ambiguity plunges us to face ourselves, to the side of the mystery of ourselves. And the silence becomes a persistent murmur in the deepest of the night. Without hope of dawn. And slowly facing this work of an exceptional tecnical mastery, of a rare poetic power, we seem penetrated by the anguish of an entire generation wich learned to know the falseness of its certainties and the inanity of its hopes.

~Michel Philippe Lerebours