Approaching the ‘Black’ Exhibition at the Kafu Hair & Gallery in Parliament Street last week, I became filled with a sense of gloom. I half expected to walk into an exhibition full of forbidding images of doom and misery. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Kafu is situated in the midst of a hairdressing salon, so you can have your locks permed and coiffured while you gaze upon the pictures hanging from the walls, a steady throng of hairdryers merrily buzzing away as you unwind from the stresses of the day, appreciating art for art’s sake.

Kafu has the aura of a trendy London Soho caf?, the kind of place you pop into to escape London’s chilly, wintery afternoons with the all too familiar downpour of rain, tooting traffic and crowds of determined shoppers.

For a few minutes you can daydream and step into another world, your mind drinking in the colours, forms and brushwork of a diverse medley of works in a convivial setting before stepping back into the office.

There is something for everyone in this exhibition and for those experts in misery wishing to cling on to their melancholy, you won’t be too disappointed. There is a flicker of hope for whisky-guzzling pessimists or the naturally morose.

Vernon Clarke’s thought-provoking charcoal and wax pastels on paper piece entitled ‘Belly’ certainly induces feelings of the kind experienced on ghostly winter evenings when the wind howls through cracks in the door, the lights keep dimming and lightening curses the sky.

Clarke depicts a forbidding, icy, dark corridor, which could be set in a factory – the rough effect of the charcoal adding to the ruggedness of the grim setting. In direct contrast to this are some butterflies, their wings speckled with dingy yellows, dark greys and blacks. Amongst the frigid, unwelcoming sterility of the factory are these creatures, nonchalantly flitting around in such a stultified, dismal setting. Perhaps it serves to remind us that there is beauty in the marred and the imperfect and if we look carefully we may just glimpse this in unprepossessing objects or people surrounding us.

Clarke’s other most appealing work is ‘Kims Game’, charcoal on paper with collage. A still life of coffee-mugs, a jug, a packet of Marlborough cigarettes, a pair of handcuffs and a light throwing out a mellow, golden beam, makes for captivating viewing.

The setting resembles that of a prison or a secret agent’s hideaway and, is equally something you’d imagine in a Raymond Chandler novel. Nevertheless, it still leaves you guessing the real location of this composition and you find yourself absorbed in each object, even the sublime, such as an oven glove. You want to know more about the person these items belong to.

What is fresh and original about this particular piece is Clarke’s use of metal objects to produce a 3D effect. A real watch and whistle are set into the still life, helping to enhance the realism of the overall composition.

Like so many of Clarke’s pieces, there is a touch of the clinical, the sanitised and the repressed and his work leads you to quiz the items he depicts, even the banal.

Laura Bell’s piece entitled ‘The Embrace’ is somehow reminiscent of contemporary ‘Fusion Artist’ Freydoon Rassouli’s work.

Rassouli’s definition of ‘Fusionart’, derives from a combination of cosmic unity, spirituality, mysticism and Divine Beauty. This is a language he translates onto the canvas from his subconscious. His swirling shapes and beautiful use of colour are inspired by his younger days growing up in Iran, where he was surrounded by mystical poetry and surreal, intricately designed murals.

Bell’s work is akin to Rassouli’s idea of using the cosmic and the mystical. She uses thick, dark purple paint to vaguely outline the shape of a couple against a lighter, rich purple background, beams of light fanning out around them. The result is stunning a simple idea transforming the whole piece into a spiritual, almost esoteric work.

It was the dreamlike qualities of Chagall’s exotic brushstrokes, which mirror some of the qualities within Bell’s piece. A dreamer and poet, he produced his spiritual, enlightening pictures by faintly outlining lovers in feverish greens and electric blues, giving them a deeper significance, seen in ‘The Concert’ and ‘Bridges over the Seine’.

Most notably, Ms. Bell’s work has some similarities to Kokoschka’s ‘The Tempest’ 1914, where his lovers are an allegory for the intertwined forces of love, poetry and nature, producing an emotionally-charged, expressionist piece.

There is a slight suggestion of the Art Deco style creeping into ‘The Embrace’, perhaps because strong emphasis has been placed on the length of the lines of the subjects.

It was the late Lady Frieda Harris, wife of British Member of Parliament, Sir Percy Harris, who made a huge impact on Art Deco spiritualist artwork. Together with Aleistair Crowley in the 1940s, she set about designing a tarot pack, known as the ‘Book of Thoth’, amalgamating sharp Art Deco lines with esoteric images. Despite what anyone may think of the egocentric master of ‘black magic’, Crowley, or of Tarot cards in general, these designs do not mirror his disturbing interest in the macabre. They are beautifully crafted Alchemical, esoteric and astrological paintings for which Lady Harris never fully received the recognition she deserved.

Laura Bell’s clean, sweeping lines result in a more demure resemblance to this combination of mystical, Art Deco work and it is certainly one of the most original, fresh compositions I have come across yet in Bermuda.

Contrasting with Ms. Bell’s first piece is her self-portrait. By enhancing certain features with purples and black, hints of Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement seep through this portrait; this same kind of application of colour is seen in Warhol’s silkscreen on canvas portrayal of Liz Taylor (1965).

Manuel Palacio’s piece ‘Ravers’ (oil on canvas, photo by Bruno Zupp) depicts three striking dancers clad in blues, yellows and peach against a vibrant background of turquoise, forest greens and deep-sea blues.

He manages to synthesise a fabulous amount of fluidity of movement into all three women. They are almost comical caricatures in a similar way to how Toulouse-Lautrec depicts his dancers.

Pamela Hunt’s portrayal of a woodland scene in light mauve with flecks of green, bright turquoise and deeper blues mix together to create space and depth. You could almost imagine Silenus, a woodland spirit, or Shakespeare’s Puck, Dryad-like, basking in the dense greenery of Pamela’s spiritual scene; a setting which takes you away from the stresses of daily life into another dimension, ebbing and flowing through the senses. You half expect the rich odour of perfumed flowers such as frangipani to permeate the air around you as you find yourself besieged by a pageantry of languorous, kaleidoscopic woodland scenery.

Kok Wan Lee’s Surrealist approach, with his famous dazzling array of sweeping circular contours and incandescent colours, has also exhibited untitled pieces in this Exhibition, although to appreciate the full power of his work you need to visit the ‘Botanicals’ Exhibition over at the Bermuda Arts Centre at Dockyard. In this Exhibition, bright oranges, glowing yellows, pinks and a dearth of rich green combine with Surrealism to produce an expressive, abstract work.

Other exhibitors include Stephen Raynor, Daniel Benson, Kevin Morris, William John Grinsley, Vincent Roberts, Bruce Stuart, Lenore Leitch, Glen Wilks and Stella Shakerchi.

‘Black’ runs until 30th October at the Kafu Hair & Gallery, 8 Parliament Street, www.kafu.bm

Fiona Lister