Only Fortune Makes Us Different from Them

For some of us life can be relatively normal — even if for days there might be a limited selection of cat food on the grocery shelves, or no baking soda. Perhaps some money problems here and there. Or encountering people who refuse the COVID vaccine because they want “the freedom of dying …”

Chris Pouler, a resident of Lakeville, Conn., since 1999, is shy: the kind of man who can auscultate a world situation for 15 years, be haunted by the immigration crisis, and express a different normality — that of the people who attempt to change their lives by walking, or crowding onto a raft in search of our kind of life.

We should perhaps remember that for centuries immigrants have broken from their environments to come to the U.S. (from Germany or Kenya — the family origins of two of our recent presidents).

We have flourished … with immigrants.

Pouler is a great painter of faces that tell personal stories. In this exhibition, he also orchestrates scenes with several characters, isolated in empty landscapes, who wonder if they have the courage — and the despair — to leave. They have seen the rage and the violence, storms flooding the streets, earthquakes breaking their towns, drug cartels kidnapping their children, and lack of work.

Their misery and anger should darken their expressive faces. But Pouler’s humble secret is that the hundreds of faces in a show of his work called “Relativity,” at the Warren Family Gallery at the Berkshire School look straight at you, with sadness and hope in their eyes; they look relatively normal. Like our own children, like our friends. The paintings reflect that once there was happiness; each pale smile paints a glimmer of hope.

It is a “political” exhibition, but in fact all the faces of children, mothers, proud fathers and trembling grandparents hold the weight of the decisions to improve their conditions. They came from Syria, from Myanmar or Sudan, Kosovo and Columbia, Haiti or Mexico. They feel deeply that their odyssey will finally be understood.

Oddly, a few faces are painted with closed eyes. Perhaps lost in their thoughts. I recognized among them a young Mohammad Ali; he was also some kind of migrant, an “other” who proclaimed he was “the greatest ever.”

In this multimedia installation, Pouler has a very skilled way of encouraging us to reflect upon a world which, in 10 or 20 years, will find millions and millions of people leaving the continents of Africa and Asia, or the Middle East because there is no longer enough water: a “relatively” big crisis! Let’s get ready!

I especially like Tryptic #2: a melancholic image that reminds me of some of the best canvasses of Eric Fischl, before his innocence turned to vile cliché. And Kristina,The Girl from Iraq, among a field of glorious marigolds. She crumbled at the hands of ISIS, picked a flower from the grave. Her spirit is triumphant!

“Relativity,” a show of paintings by Chris Pouler, is at the Warren Family Gallery at the Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., until Dec. 18. The show can be seen Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. or by appointment  (call 413-229-1265). All visitors must be vaccinated and masked.