When the committee of students and faculty selecting work for the Dittmar Memorial Gallery saw the colorful, large-scale portraits and landscapes of Cuban-born Chicago artist Eduardo De Soignie, curator Allison Putnam said they knew they wanted him.
The show, entitled “Ex Vivo: Out of the Living,” features 14 pieces of De Soignie’s recent work, which he said share the theme of conflict between elements in the paintings. The show is on display until March 17 in the Dittmar Gallery, located behind Starbucks on the first floor of Norris University Center.
“I was never really interested in work that was easy on the eye or easily matched the colors of your couch in the living room,” the artist said. “The kind of work I’m interested in is narrative and tells stories … for the most part it’s very autobiographical.”
De Soignie said his piece entitled “Conflict” represents the contention between nature and the man-made, as well as the issue of oil consumption. The painting spans the height of the wall in the gallery and shows a castle surrounded by an oil moat. Pipes pump oil into the castle and fire and smoke shoot from the fortress. A palm tree the height of the castle stands next to it, with footprints of oil at the base of the tree. Light blue and white paint splash over the scene.
The concept of conflict and tension in De Soignie’s work comes from feeling pulled between two cultures, he said. De Soignie, 38, moved to the U.S. from Cuba at age 18. When De Soignie gave a talk at Dittmar earlier this week, he brought five CDs of Cuban music, including rumbas and ceremonial Santeria music, now playing in the gallery.
“You’re never sort of fully American; you have an accent and people ask, ‘Where are you from?’ But at the same time I don’t feel like I’m fully Cuban, either,” he said. “You don’t belong here or there. You’re in between places. It gives me an advantage because it allows me to move from culture to culture, but at the same time it’s an odd place to be.”
In addition to growing up in Cuba, De Soignie studied Chinese landscape painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cultural influences are evident in De Soignie’s work, said Putnam, a Weinberg junior, which is one of the reasons the committee was drawn to his art.
“We try to show underrepresented artists, which are often women or artists of different races,” said Putnam, a double major in art history and art theory and practice. “Eduardo’s work is culturally informed and well done, too. It’s some of the best painting I’ve seen in a while.”
De Soignie said he prefers to show at universities rather than commercial galleries because universities are not trying to sell the art, but rather are displaying work to provoke the minds of its viewers.
Evanston resident David Moore was at Norris on Wednesday night for a fiction-writing Norris Mini Course. When he picked up his Starbucks drink, he noticed the paintings in the gallery and wandered in to have a look.
“It’s interesting,” he said, looking around. Moore smiled and pointed to the reddish-toned vertical painting “Self-Portrait As Ghede,” in which the subject is wearing white Aviator-style sunglasses and clamping a cigar between his teeth. “This one is kind of fun.”
