OSI AUDU : DIALOGUES WITH AFRICAN ART, Woodstock NY

OSI AUDU, Self-Portrait with Egungun Hairstyle, 2018. Graphite and pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 22 x 31 inches

 

OSI AUDU: DIALOGUES WITH AFRICAN ART at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts, Woodstock NY

Solo exhibition opens Friday October 19th and is open through Sunday, December 2.  The gallery is open Thursday-Sunday: 12:00 – 6:00 pm or by appointment.

Mr. Audu, who lives in Hurley, New York, will give an artist’s talk on Saturday, October 20, at 3:00pm and the public opening reception for the show follows at 4:00 on Saturday.
OSI AUDU: DIALOGUES WITH AFRICAN ART examines issues of identity rooted in the artist’s cultural experiences growing up in Nigeria, as well as broader metaphysical and social concepts of the self. Audu’s paintings, some of them very large in scale, are influenced by the abstract geometric possibilities in traditional African sculpture; thus the exhibition also includes examples of original nineteenth- and twentieth-century African sculpture that the artist uses as inspiration for his work. Describing the works in the show, Audu writes: “I am interested in the dualism of form and void, and the metaphysical relation between the tangible and intangible, something and nothing, light and dark, body and mind, the dual nature of being—the self in portraits.” The title “self-portrait” that Audu uses in his work is about the portrait of the intangible self, rather than a literal portrait of the artist.

Osi Audu is a Nigerian-American artist whose work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions including the Kwangju Biennale, Venice Biennale, the Africa–Africa exhibition at the Tobu Museum, Japan, and the Museum of the Mind at the British Museum. His work has also been exhibited at and collected by public institutions including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington DC, The Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, the British Museum, Horniman Museum, and Wellcome Trust Gallery, all in London, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, and the Mott-Warsh Collection in Flint, Michigan. His work has also been acquired for corporate collections including by Sony Classical New York, the Fidelity Investment Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Schmidt Bank in Germany.

OSI AUDU, Self-Portrait, after Agbogo Mmwo Mask, 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 58 inches

Audu curated an international exhibition of contemporary African art which opened at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit in September 2017, then traveled to the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2018.

He is a current recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

The exhibition is curated by Sylvia Leonard Wolf, who is the chair of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild’s Exhibition Committee. A full color catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Below is an excerpt from an essay in the catalogue:

Audu is, in effect, reclaiming abstraction…Through the language of abstraction, Audu seeks to create a container or a frame for the intangible that is the self. In choosing to dialogue with works of African art that are themselves symbolic representations of concepts, he situates his geometric abstraction firmly within African ontologies. And in doing so, he also makes tangible the intangible, or perhaps hidden, presence of African sculpture within the legacy of Western modernism.

— Christa Clarke, Ph.D. (Senior Curator, Arts of Global Africa, Newark Museum; Board President, Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) and AAMC Foundation)

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For additional information about artist OSI AUDU please contact Morton Fine Art at mortonfineart@gmail.com -or- (202) 628-2787.  Follow the highlighted link to view all available artwork by OSI AUDU on our website www.mortonfineart.com.

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All 2018 Byrdcliffe arts programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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AMBER ROBLES-GORDON in The Elm Newspaper of Washington College

The Elm

The Student Newspaper of Washington College since 1930

The Student Newspaper
of Washington College
since 1930

Kohl Gallery Exhibit Confronts Issues of Identity and Ownership

Posted by The Elm on September 20, 2018

By Victoria Gill

Elm Staff Writer

The new guest artist residing in the Kohl Gallery at the Gibson Center for the Arts hangs her identity on the walls.

Amber Robles-Gordon’s opening reception for the exhibit “Material-isms: The Cultivation of Womanhood & Agency Through Materiality,” was scheduled for Sept. 6 but, due to a water leak in Gibson, was postponed to Sept. 13 during her talk.

Her exhibition “features assemblage and installation works created from a range of found objects and textiles,” according to Julie Wills, curator and interim director of the Kohl Gallery.

This past Thursday, the gallery was filled with a crowd mostly of Washington College students, along with some faculty and community members.

According to Wills, Robles-Gordon “confronts the often-paradoxical experiences of her gender, ethnicity, and social and cultural influences.”

The collection consists of compiled pieces from five different series of mixed media art that present her experiences and reflect her pride in her Latino, African and Caribbean heritage.

Through the use of hybridism, most of Robles-Gordon’s pieces use natural materials and topics. This is evident in the canvas of paint chips that have layers of text on top of them and other mixed forms of feathers and cutout shapes.

Robles-Gordon said her use of color, light, and energy represent a part of herself. To her, it is impossible to separate her identity from her works.

The words “conformity,” “analyze,” and specifically the quote “the United States weighs on my spirit” are some of the keywords and ideas that are crucial to her incorporation of investigating femininity and masculinity, duality and spirituality, and the natural and cultural environment, according to Wills.

Robles-Gordon learned from the influential women in her upbringing, such as her mother and grandmother, to “stand in and claim my agency,” of her identity and her body, especially at times when standing out brings negative attention.

According to Robles-Gordon, the two pieces that hung behind her during her talk focus on the lack of women of color in science fiction during her upbringing. She dedicated these works to her niece, who she views as an inspiration.

Robles-Gordon said that someone she looked up to growing up was Henrietta Lacks, who much of this exhibition is inspired by.

Regarding Lacks, Robles-Gordon talks about her history and the abuse by the medical system still using her cells. The lack of recognition of Lacks’ cells in medical discovery are reflected in two large black canvases that state: “When is our, your DNA no longer my, our, your own?”

Her purpose is not only to tell Lacks’ story but to advertise womanhood.

In one section of a series, Robles-Gordon raises concerns about artists’ fear of standing up for themselves in a world where work can be hard to come by. According to Robles-Gordon, being a woman in the workplace, the chance of not being taken seriously, or even mistreated, is high.

Her use of historical text, scraps from advertisements, and natural objects such as hanging branches evokes “traditional healing arts across cultures, sacred symbols of power and divine spirituality,” Wills said.

Junior Drake Harrison said he was specifically drawn to the hanging branches.

“The colors are so poignant, they draw you in,” Harrison said.

According to the artist, these branches and spherical pieces reflect the fibers of our bonds of DNA.

Overall, Robles-Gordon wants to invoke “a spiritual and energetic sensibility” from college students, which she says communities and academic institutions are not providing.She believes colleges can start useful discussion when exposing their population to the arts.

The Kohl Gallery will be showing the exhibit until Oct. 10 during regular exhibit hours, which can be found at the door of the gallery.

AVAILABLE ARTWORK BY AMBER ROBLES-GORDON

Morton Fine Art highlighted in Delta Sky Magazine

Morton Fine Art highlighted in September 2018 Delta Sky Magazine! “Historic Adams Morgan – one of the city’s quirkiest neighborhoods – is filled with new energy.” Visit Morton Fine Art’s website or our gallery on Artsy to view our full available inventory of artworks by substantive and top tier, national and international contemporary artists!