MEIRION GINSBERG / The Visual Thinking from Magical Realism to Spleen Pop

by Paolo Meneghetti, Aesthetic Critic

The paintings of Meirion Ginsberg (born in 1985) aesthetically add a semi-serious veil to the lightness of comics. What the senses like or dislike is always “straightforward” to the mind. The character who has his head among the … “clouds” will perhaps appear naive, compared to the inevitably contradictory needs of life. If carefree is also sought by adults, how much will this hide the stress of everyday life? The artist has chosen to demystify comics. It is a bit like pop, but with respect to the standardizing extraneousness of advertising. Nor it is only a challenge to the imposed seriality, that is if the mind is concerned with the psychedelic intuition. In Meirion Ginsberg’s paintings there is a grotesque dialectic, between the faces that want an “astonished” peace and the “twisted” ecstasy of colors or shapes. The use of the foreground is perceived in all its sincerity. But it is semi-serious that, in a parallel, the “cloud” of the mind is reconfigured with the oracle in an “animistic” seriality, with the “blossoming” lozenges.

Ironically, it is not clear how a person could have his head between his “naivety” of life. The symbolism of the oracle is demystified above all by the bright tones, preventing the seriousness of maturation (and without even disturbing the drama in the choices). Can we perceive a kind of pop “spleen” for magical realism? The faces would be posing for a search for ecstasy contradicted by its restraint. More generally, the comic strip does not only reveal a vitality to us, but the confirmation that the soul and the mind “travel” together. Thus the truth of the person is spilled out without the subterfuges of convenience. All this may appear naive to the reader (from the outside). The artist removes the aura of magical realism, exasperating the lively tones, until their implosion towards an oracular “coldness”. In the end, there is a veil of unease and melancholy. The person portrayed would not feel very acclimatized, beyond the naturalness of the lived experience.

Gillo Dorfles says that the advertising is phenomenologically grounded in visual thinking. Through the sign, a first meaning becomes a vehicle for another, a reinforcement. For example, the oil company called Esso is advertised by a tiger. Then, this will be enough to associate power with it. The tiger is not just an animal. To the first meaning of the powerful engine thanks to gasoline, there is a second which is that Esso gives you power thanks to its gasoline.

Often, Meirion Ginsberg depicts the symbol (the line, the star, the petal, etc.) in different subjects, within the same painting. The feeling is that there is a double version: hot (vital) or cold (dull). The dialectic is suspended, without us being able to prefer one outcome over the other. Or perhaps, (quoting Amedeo Modigliani) only the long neck remains to “blurt out” a tension. The comic balloon would be replaced by the “periscope” of surrealism. The mixture of mind and soul would allow identification with something else.

The surreal dimension stabilizes in fieri. The genuineness of contemplation is needed, but so it is the strength of recognition. Anyone who reads a comic strip is actually “morbidly” spying on a psychophysical story of others. It may be that the aura of magical realism “falls” when the subject portrayed virtually senses the need to “free himself” from his own pose. In some paintings, the bust is framed in profile, or at an angle. Sometimes there’s the use of the very simple trick of closing the eyes. A sort of visual thinking then happens: from magical realism to pop “spleen”. Against the background of a vitalistic astonishment, for the portrait subject, will the naturalistic tones of green and blue offer a “respite” at least in the landscape? Meirion Ginsberg would lean towards the electrifying of a flattening. Perhaps the wall does not divide, but hypnotizes … and exactly like water, without this being limited to the flow.