Che Lovelace celebrates the bather in New York exhibition

Many Trinidadians know the elements of a good river lime with the river, of course, being central to that.

Trinidad and Tobago artist Che Lovelace’s latest exhibition, Che Lovelace: Bathers, takes an expository look at bodies of water and TT people’s interaction with it.

It will run from March 9-April 15 at the Nicola Vassell Gallery, Tenth Avenue, New York. Lovelace’s 14-piece exhibition carries titles such as Worshippers, showing figures dressed in Baptist-like clothing holding hands in a river. Another is called River Scene which shows bodies involved in different activities in the water.

Other pieces are titled after popular activities done by water and/or popular bodies of water such as Beach Dancers, Covigne Pool and Large Broadwalk Bathers. Many of them are done with acrylic and dry pigment.

A bio about Lovelace on the gallery’s website says he is “an unabashed painter of the flora, fauna, figures, landscapes and rituals of the Caribbean.”

“Lovelace likens his material and formal interventions–such as cleaving the canvas into quadrants and dissecting the picture plane into cubist constituents–to exploring Caribbean selfhood as an integration of antecedents and transforming simplicity into wonder.”

A press release about the exhibition said, “Meditating on famed depictions of bathers throughout the art historical canon, Lovelace was particularly fascinated by artists who were lesser known for the subject. One such, Edvard Munch, rendered bathers with energy and vitalism, a philosophy germinated from Aristotelian times that emphasised the vital forces of nature and good health. Framing this immemorial trope in the specificity of his own culture, Lovelace celebrates the bather as an intrinsic figure of the Trinidadian vernacular.”

On his Facebook page Lovelace said, “Very, very excited! My first full-scale New York gallery exhibition opens one week from now on Thursday 9th March at the Nicola Vassell Gallery in Chelsea.

“The exhibition brings together paintings, some of which I’ve been working on for several years, all focused around the body and water.

“Our relationship with water…the sea, rivers etc. here in the Caribbean is a complex one, and I have tried to translate through my own experiences what that relationship feels and looks like.”

The gallery described the exhibition as a “series of paintings chronicling the artist’s exploration of the body in and around water.”

It added, “With an expressionistic hand, Lovelace weaves stories of life, freedom, and post-colonialism in his native Trinidad, into a tapestry of abstracted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits.”

Lovelace began working with Jamaican-born gallerist Nicola Vassell in 2021. Vassell opened the gallery in 2021 but has worked in the art world for about two decades.

In 2021, his work was shown at the Independent Art Fair in New York and there Vassell became aware of his work. Vassell approached him about working together and, from there, the working relationship grew.

“It has grown to this point where we are now doing my first solo exhibition collaborating with the gallery. We did go to Miami Art Basel in December which went quite well and was a success. It was my first time at Art Basel as well. So I also went with her gallery to that art fair.”

Growing up in TT and the Caribbean, water is “ever present,” he said.

There is a whole culture around water and people’s interaction with it, Lovelace said.

Water paints a vivid picture of Lovelace’s own life.

“Over the last few years I have been working in the Chaguaramas area and I see a lot of people who come, specifically, to be close to water. I, myself grew up in Matura and I am also a surfer,” he said.

It was always something he wanted to address and had already done paintings showing people close to water, bathers or someone on a beach.

He thought he could expand on these and turn it into a full-themed set of paintings.

In its bio, the gallery says it “is a contemporary art gallery committed to discourse that widens the lens of the history and future of art. Its focus is on developing an inter-generational, cross-disciplinary program of international artists and thinkers.”

This speaks to and fits well with Lovelace’s view of himself as an artist.

“I am placed within the lens of art that is a little broader than the main centres. I am working in what would have been a traditionally peripheral space, a space in the Caribbean where we are still developing our own infrastructures around art.

“But we do have a lot of artists, a lot of creative people, we make a lot of things and we are a creative people. I see this as an opportunity to join with and collaborate with someone who is working in a centre, like New York, but who understands the value of what is being made and the discussions being had, the energy that is being put out outside of those centres but which contribute, generally, to the movement of where art is going.”

This exhibition is a proud moment for Lovelace and he sees it as a pathway to expanding the reach and practice of local and regional artists and their art.