Artists Let In The Light

It’s not just the large paintings covering the walls that suffuse the gallery with color, though they go a long way toward transforming the space around them by themselves. The balloons making their way around the gallery floor help out a lot, too. Even if the gallery is quiet — has a party just finished, or is one about to start? — they encourage a different way of engaging with the art, a little less formal, a little more festive. Maybe, in another sense, they help us let our guard down, and be more open to what the art has to say.

The Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street is currently hosting two solo shows through March 31 — ​“Revival: A Spiritual Journey” and ​“Skyward Bound” — featuring the works of Guyanese-born artists Stanwyck Cromwell and Marlon Forrester, respectively. The decision to mount the shows in neighboring galleries, where viewers can catch glimpses of one show while standing in the midst of the other, was wise; though the artists may belong to different generations, they find common ground in their sensibilities and connections to where they were born.

Cromwell has been in Connecticut for a long time, having moved here in 1970, ​“though his Caribbean roots serve as a visual footing for his work as he draws on memories full of saturated colors and patterns that make up his paintings,” an accompanying note states. Those memories of a tropical place are a source of strength. ​“My art radiates a colorful energy that is both visually and spiritually stimulating. I find resiliency in being able to create art forms that reflect my rich and diverse culture,” Cromwell is quoted as saying. His style of painting ​“invites the viewer to physically enter Cromwell’s own world where the people of the Caribbean shine,” the statement continues. ​“His work combines both imaginary and spiritual concepts through myths and folklores, combining abstraction with representational. Cromwell’s work embodies his experiences as a human being and a Guyanese-born artist.”

As the above notes suggest, Cromwell’s canvases crackle with energy. In his kinetic figures and shifting colors, it’s easy to infer movement, voices, music — the sounds of a celebration. But there’s an element of reverence at work, too, of place, of ancestry, of spirit. The title of two of the paintings, Revival, activates two meanings of the word. There’s the religious gathering, for the profession and practice of faith. There’s also, in a more basic way, a deep sense of rebirth.

Like Cromwell, Marlon Forrester came to the U.S. from Guyana when he was young. He was raised in Boston, graduated the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2008 and got an MFA from Yale School of Art in 2010. His art generally has a more argumentative bent to it than Cromwell’s does; as an accompanying note states, he is ​“concerned with the corporate use of the black body, or the body as logo.” His pieces ​“reflect meditations on the exploitation implicit in the simultaneous apotheosis and fear of the muscular black figure in America.” 

A sense of elements in tension with one another is apparent. Where Cromwell’s figures feel full of freedom of expression, Forrester’s feel constricted, even restrained. They can’t move as they would like; there is a role they’re supposed to be playing, and it’s one they perhaps feel ambivalent about. But Forrester and Cromwell have in common the use of color to convey their figures’ inner strength. In Forrester’s pieces, the color reminds us that the strength in Black people is something others might be afraid of. But it also gives people what they need to persevere.

“Revival: A Spiritual Journey” and ​“Skyward Bound” run at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, 51 Trumbull St., through March 31. Visit ECOCA’s website for hours and more information.