Ryan Mendoza - Welcome to America

"....a young artist that recalls Goya, that studies the old Dutch masters or Picasso's paintings, who always has the entirety of the history of painting in his gaze, seemingly the survivor of a forgotten, ancient war." With these words, Milan Kundera recounts his Mendoza, that young American artist who left America to grow up in Europe some time ago. Yet today, Mendoza appears even younger than ever, despite his obsessions, his young girls, his photographs, and the memory of the stars and stripes flag. His painting arrives more directly than ever, maintaining intact that clean action and American rigor that still betrays good manners. The soft colors do not suffice to sweeten this reality, as neither do the tender calls to childhood of his cartoon characters, or the mirrors and the seductive sofas. Ryan is American and the districts of Naples, the craftsmen's workshops, the historic buildings, and the alleyways of Paris or the apartment blocks of Berlin have been the frames for his work, they tell the story of a long journey because the Mother home is always her, America. Mother and stepmother, hated enemy only to be loved once more, rejected then forgiven, ignored and accused and then found once more on the streets of Detroit or the suburbs of New York. It is the America of one's flesh, of affection, it is the America of freshly cut green lawns and white dogs which has emerged over the years on these canvases of such refined beauty and absolute technique. Today however, as the wars in the world continue to produce their dead, Mendoza decides to narrate a stepmother America, the crueler she becomes, the more the door is opened up to her, to begin those talks again that were abandoned years ago. So here is his return to the Mother home, of which this Sicilian exhibition is a superb preview. From a historical place of memory and a land full of contradictions such as that of America, begins an exhibition that from Europe will arrive in the States to narrate from an authentic artist, through brushes, paint, music, photography, loneliness and smiles, because Ryan smiles continuously, and to us common mortals it is never a given to know what he is thinking, or how much of that smile is bitter and how much of it is sweet. (Giuseppina Napoli)