Reflets de la Peinture Sous-Verre at the Yassine Arts Center, curated by Omar Diack  is a gigantic exhibition of over 150 works on glass that pays homage to the most indigenous of Senegalese painting styles and highlights the incredible diversity and influence of modern glass painting. Were all the objects not hung together in the grand format of the Yassine Arts Center, one might not realize they had a common antecedent. This show is a coup for Yassine Arts who specialize in promoting modern Senegalese culture and who had the foresight to see that sous-verre is not a relic of the past but a modern Senegalese art form. Is it a successful show? Collectors were taking their pieces off the wall and the holes were quickly filled by additional works and artists.

Early sous-verre was often characterized by religious themes. However, it was soon overcome by genre scenes, portraits and finally by humor. In this sense we see how Senegalese artists viewed themselves, and from these themes we are introduced to how modern Senegalese artists took their roots and transformed them into contemporary views of art and society.

The best-known artist in the show is Anta Germaine Gaye. We see her well-known style that works so well in metal and glass assemblages. One must ask: what came first, the glass or the assemblage? While the pieces have glass surfaces, they seem to have a depth and character that is both Anta Germaine Gaye’s classic style and sous-verre. The elements meld seamlessly one to the other. It isn’t possible to say that the pieces in the Reflet show are from a different hand or manner than Mme Gaye’s other work. The piece Thiossane is an amalgam of her techniques and subjects and it stands in the high style of sous-verre art: part portrait, part social comment. At the same time it is constructed with tactile materials that include a glass surface and colors that are not earthy but a rich rust-metal. These aren’t the colors of primitivism but of modernism.

Perhaps the most unusual work in the show is by Afouss Sarr. Mr. Sarr has a series of pieces that are nearly three-dimensional. In the series he inserts glass into pieces of wood and then paints on both the glass and the wood while simultaneously allowing the viewer to see through the glass. While his subject Car Rapide may be unlike any other car rapide you have ever scene, his Auto Mbalite and Rêve de mÔme are more suggestive of a feeling of being in Dakar in January 2006. He also exhibits genre scenes and an excellent version of Thiossane.

There are several stylized portraits in the show that capture the expressions of their subjects in a way that grips the viewer and makes you think you know these people. Betty Kande has a family triptych called Co-épouse 1, Co-épouse 2, and L’époux. This family portrait is an entriguing study of three personalities that gives one the feeling that the triptych is from a woman’s point of view. It could never exist in Europe. She also has a painting entitled Le sourire de bonheur that recalls the feeling of an old photograph.

Séa Diallo also exhibits several portraits but his are looser, more alive, and he does not use an opaque backing to his figures. Instead the transparency of the glass creates depth that would otherwise be impossible. The figures are loosely painted and the background has a transparency backed by newspaper clippings.

Ablaye Thiam creates figures that are minutely and magnificently detailed and decorative, but these sous-verre paintings are encased in giant metallic frames that both reflect the work and enhance its vibrancy. The paintings literally come off the wall inside of what appears to be a giant modernist insect. In Voyage he has what appears to be a village scene of cattle and people with traditional costumes riding in a wagon, but the rendering of the limbs of the living beings becomes so stylized that they appear to be from another planet. The figures are consumed by the color of their surroundings and accoutrements.

Working in a more modernist style Chiek Ba makes highly abstract paintings with thinned layers of oil paint that are very translucent. Seen under a glass surface, they resonate their colors in a way that an abstract painting on canvas can’t. One of his paintings is framed in window aluminum. 

Mbida is an artist who removes or de-emphasizes the background to emphasize the movement of his subjects. He uses tiny details to create colors and textures. His African dancers seem to be influenced from Indian glass painting, although I doubt it’s the case. He attacks every genre subject from Car Rapide to Arche de Noé.

Babacar Ly has a completely different approach. He paints typical themes of women with baskets and children but he puts them into an abstract environment that makes the figures secondary to the coloration. By framing the paintings from the back with black grids, they attain a minimalist esthetic not normally associated with sous-verre.

Babacar Lo’s Jalousie has an expression of deep thought that makes one wonder exactly what she is thinking and what she will do next.

Did you ask for traditional subject matter like a signare? There is a section of paintings only of signares. Religious Paintings? Moustapha Seck makes Koranic calligraphy on mirrored glass with black ink. Djibril Diene does Noah’s Arc. Humor? Ibou Barry does a funny Voyage Difficile. Mamoune Gueye’s humourous Vendeuses looks like someone you know. Babacar Lo makes stylized modern young women in his Diskettes, Dioumbokh Out and Driankés. Azou Bade has a woman making a potion to keep her man at home. Street scenes? Paco does Goré, Azou Bade does Marché Kermel and Moussa Johnson does Scène de Vie.

Poetry? Traditional unmixed colors? It’s all there. This show is the definitive statement on modern glass painting.