This is a painting! Or maybe not? The water is so clear, so blue. And it's crazy... but a plausible serenity in the work of Nicolas Lambelet Coleman, 25 years old and already making a name for himself internationally, is almost suspicious. What hides behind a gentle melancholy that hovers, both in the young man and the inflatable mattress on which he floats? And is the idealistic tranquility of a family at the beach, like that of a couple captured in the nonchalance of an afternoon at the pool, real at all? Or just fictional because it's painted?
Of course, the artist, a modern art enthusiast who readily cites his giants (Picasso, Matisse, Peter Doig) in the settings of his works, will not ignore the reference to Magritte. Intentional or not! Yet, there remains this ambient strangeness and an almost anachronistic chain today. A strangeness that strikes, uncontrollable. At the moment of encountering the work to be seen for the first time in Switzerland at Foreign Agent in Lausanne, a gallery that enthusiastically embraces the contemporary African art scene, as does the art market.
It's the young painter, in the circuit for three years with solo exhibitions already held in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, London, and Paris, who took the first step. More sentimental than interested, according to gallery owner Olivier Chow. 'We both participated in the 1-54, the Contemporary African Art Fair, in New York in 2022. He saw at my booth that I was from Lausanne and told me that his mother was too. The story continued with an initial success at the beginning of the year at a fair in Marrakech, and it continues with this...' he spoke more about it.
But one can feel, without him having to verbalize it, that the gallery owner has entered the work, captivated by its unique expressiveness. Undoubtedly, also seized by this intelligence in posing identity, multicultural, or simply existential questions, without allowing himself to be corrupted, or trying to resolve debates that divide and sometimes even create hatred.
Broad and wandering ideas.
With a Swiss mother and an African-American father—both prominent university professors—Nicolas Lambelet Coleman, born, raised, and educated in political science and art under the star-spangled banner, lives with these questions. But if he fills his canvases with his existence as if he were filling the pages of a diary, it's with broad, wandering ideas. Always connected to the environment he finds himself in, the memory of the place and its impact on beings, in a quest for harmony between the external world and his perceptions.
Thus, the waves shimmering behind 'La Vaudoise,' his mother, and 'Le Vaudois,' a self-portrait, carry very different atmospheric moods! 'These are very simple compositions,'
he says. 'Works that reflect the intergenerational bond and represent a part, but not the entirety of my identity. Lausanne is a symbolic place for me since my mother was born there. And the landscape of quality, tranquility, and beauty has a great emotional power over me, regardless of the location, whether it's in London, Marrakech, Lausanne, or in North Carolina where he grew up, whether in 'chromatic richness, abundance of patterns, or aquatic simplicity,' Nicolas Lambelet Coleman seeks life. 'My painting is, for me, a form of autobiography, a means of understanding. Whether through portraits or still lifes, I know there is always an element of introspection. But I also feel that more universal truths emanate from these everyday scenes.'
In water so clear, so blue, in calmness... Nicolas Lambelet Coleman also says that his works are not all easy to find. To express. Nor are his perspectives all easy. His horizons are absent, his framings, his averted, melancholic, and sometimes questioning looks, enclose us in his artist's bubble. Where the images are not all given!
