5th International Contemporary Art Competition
At “MYDOME OSAKA”, Osaka, Japan
28th November-11th December, 1994
Moonlight Rabbit, by Charles Njau
Charles Njau´s “Moonlight Rabbit” transports the viewer into a miniature world of lean, simple forms and a special range of colours. The latter convey a feeling of unreality and are used by the artist to create a world on its own a certain distance from the reality he inhabits.
The picture spurs the imagination of the viewer. Charles Njau was born and bred in Tanzania. He has lived in Sweden since the seventies and this permeates his imagery.
Those of us who have experienced a moonlit night in his home district in the vicinity of Kilimanjaro feel life pulsing through this picture. In the African night, with its myriad of sounds intertwining and filling the great darkness, one can imagine two hares lying together with both a snake and a frog. These are perhaps totems resting together in the night. Farthest to the right there is a shape indicating a building. Light streams out through the open door. symbolizing the proximity of humanity It may just as well be an old-fashioned African hut as a mosque.
“Moonlight Rabbit” is a subtle, playful picture filled with warmth and security. It is perhaps an invocation, a prayer that both the human and animal kingdoms shall live in harmony with each other in nature. A paradise, where it is safe to live both day and night.
Jacqueline Stare
8th International Contemporary Art Competition
At “MYDOME OSAKA” Osaka, Japan
30th November-7th December 1997
The Lute Player, by Charles Njau
A maze of fractured pieces in warm tones, a challenging jigsaw-puzzle. Between the real and the poetic, The Lute Player unfolds before the beholder´s eyes. The artist, Charles Njau, takes us by way of the title from the purely fantastic world of shape and colour in flat arrangement, to discovering a person playing the lute in the centre of the picture. Suddenly all parts of the picture come to life, becoming potential carriers of meaning beyond the purely visual. Crossing the border from colour and form for the sake of aesthetic pleasure, to telling a story about something felt, the picture uses two well-known ways of making visual art. The modern system of the arts reserves specialised expressions for different categories of arts: drama, music, visual art, etc., which are to be respected and the borders kept clear. This is obviously a game well known to Njau. But when sharing experiences, we rather use metaphors to find analogies between different categories of the world held in common. Making a picture with equal parts figurative and fantastic elements goes well with the idea of music. In a way this is a story of shared, lived reality being told. Think of the expessions used when talking about the elements of a picture: composition, harmony, rythm, colour tones – all classical words, bending the rules of the arts game. Njau´s picture plays on shifting foreground for background, using the expressions from one category of the arts for another, moving from the nonfigurative to the narrative. The nonfigurative parts in the picture can be thought of as filled with tones of a lute and a piano, played in colours.
Charlotte Bydler
10th International Contemporary Art Competition
At ” CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE OSAKA (CASO)”, Osaka Japan
6th October-23rd December 2001
Man´s Best Friend II, by Charles Njau
Charles Njau´s Man´s Best Fiend II is built up by forms and colours corresponding to each other in intricate ways. Like in the holistic worldview the sum is greater than the parts. The protagonists step forward from the collaboration of elements.
A man is standing to the left. He is dressed in a coat and on his head, a beret. He is wearing big boots, with his pants tucked into them. His head is directed towards the dog that is seated besides him. Their eyes meet. The man and the dog are bound together by colours and forms.
But as well as saying that the abstractions are building up reality, you could also twist it around and say that it´s actually deconstructing it in an
analytical way. There is no fixed perspective in the painting. The shattered facets also become a play with depth and flatness. There is no given entry into the picture, you can approach it from many different angles at the same time. In this sense the man and the dog could be coming together or going away. The abstractions could be reality dissolving into pure memory. History drifting away from it´s nucleus.
Njau`s choice of colours are breaking the borders of realism. Maybe Njau is sharing a lived experience with us, rearranged by the colourful contents of memory. In art, subjective reality can be lost and found. In this sense art is nothing but a journey into ourselves.
Stina Högkvist