ART CITIES:Brussels-Genesis Tramaine
Genesis Tramaine is an expressionist devotional painter who creates abstract portraits of men and women who transcend gender, race, and social structures. She digests the everyday and regurgitates it as work that evokes déjà vu, beckoning memories of past lives and glimpses of undiscovered futures. The blueprint of Genesis’ style is rooted in strong mix of 1980’s urban New York graffiti, and imagined images of gospel hymns sung on Sunday morning during church.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery Archive
Genesis Tramaine’s work is also powerfully influenced by Bible verses and other readings she studied in church. Her spiritual influences have a strong impact on the composition and depth of her paintings, which explore deeply human themes including ethics and insanity, the mundane and the inhumane, spirituality, sexuality, and sentimentality. The paintings featured in Genesis Tramaine’s solo exhibition “Evidence of Grase” serve as her creative rumination on the many trials and tribulations that have come to define 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, the resurgence of racial tensions in North America’s mainstream discourse, and the Black Lives Matter movement that has shifted our social consciousness. Searching for a way to make sense of what she found to be troubling in our society – injustice, discrimination, and a lack of care for each other – Tramaine began her quest for answers. As Tramaine often does when faced with a problem and seeks to process events occurring in the world around her, she looks inward and engages in deep prayer. Tramaine’s prayers provided a spiritual spark that catalyzed the creation of the paintings in “Evidence of Grase”. These paintings are a visual ‘sermon’ that articulates her faith, amplifies her relationship with God, and provides a sanctuary for a world in need of healing. Genesis Tramaine is a devotional painter who produces work that adroitly intertwines figurative and abstract mark-making into the pictorial plane resulting in the cultivation of a unique visual vocabulary. Every brushstroke is channeling the pain, fear, anguish, optimism, and joy that we all feel as human beings but can’t always articulate. Looking at a Genesis Tramaine painting is a reminder of what it means to be ALIVE, PRESENT, and connected to the sacred. Her work requires a different kind of viewing that encapsulates the importance of history, the power of religion, and the metamorphic impact that visual art can have on society. The exhibition is a creative escalation for Genesis Tramaine, imbued with a new level of pictorial movement resulting in a series of visually arresting paintings that continue to present the artist’s ideas, meditations, and expression of faith. The body of work exhibited in “Evidence of Grase”, arguably Tramaine’s best, serves as an inflection point in her practice. The pictures highlighted in the exhibition are bursting with color, vibrating with rich line quality, and reflect the production of an artist who is genuinely in-tune with their creative capacity. The pieces featured in the exhibition are larger in scale, bolder contours, and showcase Tramaine’s journey towards mastery as a painter. As a self-identified Black Queer Female Bodied painter from Brooklyn, Tramaine finds shelter from the world’s ills through prayer, song, movement, and painting. The act of painting is a cathartic space to commune with God and deepen her spiritual connection. Through this ritual, Genesis transcends into the flow of painting as a divine vessel that engages with the canvas.
Photo: Genesis Tramaine, I Prayed For You, 2020, Oil Sticks, Acrylic, Yeshua, 185 x 125 cm, © Genesis Tramaine, Courtesy the artist and Almine Rech Gallery
Info: Almine Rech Gallery, Abdijstraat 20 Rue de l’Abbaye, Brussels, Duration: 7/1-28/2/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.alminerech.com
