OSI AUDU in ArtDaily

Exhibition of recent drawings by Osi Audu opens at Skoto Gallery

Self-Portrait No 1, 2016, graphite and pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 56 x 72 ins. Courtesy Skoto Gallery. 8

NEW YORK, NY.- Skoto Gallery presents New Portraits: Self in the Global Age, an exhibition of recent drawings by Osi Audu. Born in Nigeria, the artist was educated in that country and the United States. For over two decades now, he has maintained a strong professional presence in Korea, Japan, Great Britain, United States, Italy, Germany, Austria and Africa through highly acclaimed exhibitions of his paintings. His work is in several private and public collections including The British Museum; The Horniman Museum, London; Schmidt Bank, Bayreuth, Germany; The Iwalewa House, Germany, The Wellcome Trust Collection, London, The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey. His work was included in the recently concluded 2015 Venice Biennale, in the collateral event exhibition – Frontiers Re-imagined at the Palazzo Grimani Museum in Venice. This is his third solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, January 14th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present. Of Selfies and Shadow play: Osi Audu’s Self-Portrait Osi Audu has the astute ability to break down complex ideas into simplified, visually appealing compositions. He has developed a unique vocabulary that emphasizes geometry, volume, tactility, and quality of the tromp l’oeil, in a career that spans nearly thirty years. Though on flat surface, his work appears three-dimensional. Solid black forms dominate the center of the picture plane. Some cast reverent shadows that taper to the edges of the paper or canvas. With voluminous architectural shapes composed of different parts but bound seamlessly by slick white lines in the new Self-Portrait series, Audu stretches the boundaries of abstraction, teasing the imagination. There is clarity of form that immediately casts a spell on the viewer. Yet Audu’s work does not give in to pedestrian interpretation. One must first acquaint oneself with the philosophy that informs his creative disposition in order to have a more meaningful encounter with the body of work. Though minimalist abstraction is a principal motivation, it is not abstraction for mere sake nor is the dualism (solids and shadows, black and grey) that is apparent in his oeuvre a mere visual device or creative flair. Both are conceptual armatures that help to advance an artistic position and the culturally-derived epistemology that grounds his work. Audu’s aesthetics draws specifically upon the Yoruba ontology of dual consciousness centered on the human head. The head (ori) is a bifurcated ensemble that best represents the intertwining of spirit and matter, mind and body. Orí inú (invisible or inner head) is the locus of consciousness, an a priori that gives substance to being. Orí òde (outer or tangible head), the physical manifestation of consciousness, is a vehicle of perception, identity, and interaction with reality. It is this dialogic imagining of beingness, of the human self, that Audu translates on white paper and canvas, using black pastel, graphite, primary colors, wool, among other media. His use of black monochrome holds pertinent symbolic value. It ramifies the cultural vicissitudes of blackness as well as outlines Audu’s position of engagement in an art world that is burdened by a historical legacy of excluding or de-legitimizing black artists who claim the arcane language of abstraction. In previous solo exhibitions at Skoto Gallery such as Osi Audu: Ile Ori/Ori Ile (House of the Head/Head of the House) in 2006, the head is addressed as a metaphor of collective consciousness. Audu explores the head as a cognitive altar that dictates the cycle of life and human responses to existential conditions. Conversely, the current exhibition titled New Portraits: Self in the Global Age focuses on the autonomous self, shifting emphasis from collective consciousness to the singular being as unit of sensation. It comprises of eighteen works from the ongoing Self-Portrait series. They push Audu’s fastidious formalism, complex forms, and geometric abstraction further albeit in a different direction. Conceptually, one might speak of them as selfies, those totems that feed the narcissist cult of the individual, very symptomatic of our contemporary world. Yet we are admonished not to think of the works as portraits in a physiognomic sense. Instead, they are reflections on the ways in which the individual negotiates his/her being in the world. Following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, they are the artist’s attempts to distill perception, by relating and piecing together the spectacles of his own world in relation to the world at large. It is the interior-self that forms the basis of rootedness; the source of identity and personhood. As such, Audu casts his gaze inward, to his Orí inú, the seat of consciousness where memories also reside; reconciling it with his Orí òde, the vessel that bears out his past and present experiences, of growing up and studying in Nigeria, living in the United Kingdom, and current domicile in New York. Altogether, the works capture Audu’s attempt to find himself in a teleological world that is mediated by relations. Ultimately, what lies at the core of this new body of work is a phenomenological awareness of being part of a globalized reality, marked by changing conditions, cultural exchanges on a planetary scale, and a network of disjunctive and constitutive references. Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi Artist, Art Historian, and Curator of African Art Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

VICTOR EKPUK’s solo reviewed by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi and featured in CONTEMPORARY AND

Composition 11, Courtesy of the Artist

MEMORY IS CENTRAL TO VICTOR EKPUK’S ARTISTIC PRACTICE. IT ENCOMPASSES THE RECEIVED, APPROPRIATED, LIVED, AND IMAGINED.

by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi

Victor Ekpuk’s creative process involves moments of quietude in which he digs studiously into his memory bank for visual clarity. The calm search for acuity, very revealing of the artist’s interest in human experiences, frames Reminiscences and Current Musings. In a way, this solo effort is a retrospective because it draws from several bodies of work produced by the artist between 1996 and 2013. The 20 works in the exhibition represent the artist’s meditations on his social experiences, drawing from Nigeria and the United States, his country of birth and residency respectively, and, as with most contemporary artists, other worlds that he has experienced in the course of several international artists residencies and exhibitions in the last few years.

Memory is central to Ekpuk’s artistic practice. It encompasses the received, appropriated, lived, and imagined. It can be attached to a particular place to invoke Pierre Nora’s notion of Lieux de Mémoire [1], or a social experience that is conceptually articulated without claims to spatial specificity or a tangible context. Nora’s Lieux de Mémoire monumentalizes collective memory by rooting it in the concrete, in spaces, in gestures, objects, and images. Yet for Ekpuk, memory is a metaphor for unloading a stream of consciousness that is tied to either a specified or an unspecified social space. It is also a state of being; a meditative process of creative remembering of the personal and the collective.

Using invented scripts and imageries that evolved from the cryptic nsibidi writing system that is autochthonous to eastern Nigeria, Ekpuk translates the human experience both transparently and symbolically. It is no secret that the nsibidi ideographic forms now function as a conceptual backdrop for him. Earlier on, he drew extensively from the writing system, as is evident in the paintings: The Three Wise Men (triptych, acrylic on panel, 1996), Heaven’s Gate (acrylic on prayer board, 2000), and Idaresit (acrylic on canvas, 2004). At that point, Ekpuk was more interested in aesthetic memory, the idea that one can subject a common cultural wellspring to rigorous formal analysis in order to create new aesthetic possibilities. Except one has some familiarity with the nsibidi form, the three works are open to multiple interpretations. They present what the art historian Chike Aniakor calls the “veiling of message [as being] the fortress of the artistic impulse.”[2]  The works may have specific messages, but they are not directly accessible and require the artist’s intervention in order to unlock them.

Three Wise Men, Courtesy of the Artist

 

Ekpuk has however become adept at inventing his own scripts, which may appear weighty in appearance, but are unburdened with fixed meaning. Unlike the nsibidi ideograms, Ekpuk’s inventions bear no deep secrets. Instead, they are outlets through which he articulates his perception of the world around him. In the artist’s oeuvre, his scripts recur in the form of dots, scrawls, contrived signs that are sometimes borrowed from pop culture, and few nsibidi signs which he employs more for their aesthetic value than for their significance. In 2006, Ekpuk had shifted his interest to drawing as his main channel of expression at the expense of painting in order to explore more vigorously the aesthetics of graphic signs as abstract forms. Altogether his scripts provide insights into a world of the artist’s making, a world that straddles the experienced and the imagined.

Recent works such as Bicycle Groove (2012) and Santa Fe Sunset (from the Santa Fe Suite Series, 2013) directly address the artist’s time in Amsterdam, and Santa Fe, respectively. In the two works, Ekpuk adopts visual referents that lend themselves to fairly easy reading. Bicycle Groove explores a socio-cultural phenomenon of a place that the artist has experienced. In the piece in graphite and acrylic on Moulin de Larroque paper, a diagrammatic wheel stands as an avatar of Amsterdam, a city famed for its cycling culture. Ekpuk astutely assembles rudimentary forms and lines on the picture surface. He is effective in conveying his experience of Amsterdam without overloading the work. The work is also a balancing act in the use of negative and positive spaces and in the reduction of forms to their barest essentials, very much present in the artist’s other works.

Ekpuk’s approach, which also highlights the innate and poetic quality of lines, allows him to maintain an ambivalence of engaging memory directly and symbolically. Santa Fe Sunset, produced in a recent artist residency in New Mexico, reflects this ambivalence. The element that immediately captures the viewer’s attention in the work is the splotch of orange acrylic, painted atop graphic inscriptions, in the center of the picture surface. This layer of paint is representational. As the work’s title suggests, it is the setting sun. The translucent quality of the orange sun allows the viewer to see through to the ink scripts, which also surround the sun. The symbolic scripts can thus be interpreted as visual translations of Ekpuk’s memory of Santa Fe.

The artist makes use of centralizing symbols in several works, including Memories at Hand (2013), The Traveler (2012) and Take 5 (2013), to subtly direct viewers’ interpretations of his art. He is also adroit in the use of contrast of colors and black graphite or ink in Composition No. 11 (2012), The Thinker (2012), and Indigo Girl(2013). This interplay imbues the works with balance, rhythm, and a sensuous quality that is visually attractive yet uncanny. Composition No. 11 is also a very successful attempt by the artist in focusing solely on the abstract qualities of graphic forms. Although works such as Memories at Hand (2013) and The Traveler (2012) are highly symbolic, the key elements in the two works — schematized hand and feet, respectively — bear decipherable messages. State of Being (2012) and Meditations of Memory (2012) address those moments of introspection by the artist as he searched for visual eloquence. Both works also explore Ekpuk’s experience of straddling several cultures.

Take 5, Courtesy of the Artist

 

In all, the works are several bodies of interconnected ideas that fit perfectly into an overarching artistic vision from nearly two decades. They represent Ekpuk’s attempt to translate his experiences and the larger human experience, bearing the burden of contemplation, history, and contemporaneity.

 

Victor Ekpuk: Reminiscences & Current Musings, a solo exhibition at Morton Fine Art (MFA), in Washington DC,  features selected works by the artist Victor Ekpuk, produced from 1996-2013.  13 September – 8 October 2013. Artist Talk: 28 September, 2013. 

 

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi (Nigeria, lives in USA) is an artist, curator, and art historian. He is a Smithsonian Institution Fellow and was recently appointed as the curator of African Art at the Hood Museum Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA. Nzewi was also recently appointed as one of the curators of the Dak’Art 2014.

 

References

[1] Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de Mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).

[2] Chika Aniakor, “AKA: The Conquests of An Artistic Vision,” AKA 89 [4thannual exhibition catalogue] (Enugu: AKA, 1989), 8.

 

Link to the article in full:  http://www.contemporaryand.com/blog/magazines/memory-is-central-to-victor-ekpuks-artistic-practice-it-encompasses-the-received-appropriated-lived-and-imagined/

Nigerian artist VICTOR EKPUK’s solo “Reminiscences & Current Muses” opens at Morton Fine Art in DC

REMINISCENCES & CURRENT MUSINGS

A solo exhibition of artwork by VICTOR EKPUK, featuring a rare collection of his artwork from 1996-2013

September 13th, 2013 – October 8th, 2013

OPENING RECEPTION

Friday, September 13th, 6-8pm

The artist will be in attendance.

ARTIST TALK

Saturday, September 28th, 4-6pm

Victor Ekpuk, Vigilante 2, 2012, ink and collage on paper, 48″x36″

EXHIBITION LOCATION

Morton Fine Art (MFA)

1781 Florida Ave NW (at 18th & U Sts)

Washington, DC 20009

HOURS

Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm

Sunday 12pm-5pm

Select excerpts from the essay of Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, PhD, 

Curator of African Art, The Hood Museum of Art on Victor Ekpuk’s Reminiscences & Current Musings: 

 “Victor Ekpuk’s creative process involves moments of quietude in which he digs studiously into his memory bank for visual clarity. The quiet search for acuity, very revealing of the artist’s interest in human experiences, frames Reminiscences and Recent Musings. In a way, this solo effort is a retrospective because it draws from several bodies of work produced by the artist between 1996 and 2013. These 20 works represent the artist’s meditations on his social experiences, drawing from Nigeria and the United States, his country of birth and residency respectively, and as with most contemporary artists, other worlds that he has experienced in the course of several international artists residencies in the last few years.

…Using invented scripts and imageries that evolved from the cryptic nsibidi writing system that is autochthonous to eastern Nigeria, Ekpuk translates the human experience both transparently and symbolically. It is no secret that the nsibidi ideographic forms now function as a conceptual backdrop for him. Earlier on, he drew extensively from the writing system, as is evident in the paintings: The Three Wise Men (triptych, acrylic on panel, 1996), Heaven’s Gate (acrylic on prayer board, 2000), and Idaresit (acrylic on canvas, 2004). At that point, Ekpuk was more interested in aesthetic memory, the idea that one can subject a common cultural wellspring to formal analysis in order to create new aesthetic possibilities. Except one that has some familiarity with the nsibidi form, the three works are open to multiple interpretations. They present what the art historian Chike Aniakor calls the “veiling of message [as being] the fortress of the artistic impulse.”[i] The works may have specific messages, but they are not directly accessible and require the artist’s intervention in order to unlock them.

Ekpuk has however become adept at inventing his own scripts, which may appear weighty in appearance, but are unburdened with fixed meaning. Unlike the nsibidi ideograms, Ekpuk’s inventions bear no deep secrets. Instead, they are outlets through which he articulates his perception of the world around him. In the artist’s oeuvre, his scripts recur in the form of dots, scrawls, contrived signs that are sometimes borrowed from pop culture, and few nsibidi signs which he employs more for their aesthetic value than for their significance. In 2006, Ekpuk had shifted his interest to drawing as his main channel of expression at the expense of painting in order to explore more rigorously the aesthetics of graphic signs as abstract forms. Altogether his invented scripts provide insights into a world of the artist’s making, a world that straddles the experienced and the imagined.

…In all, the works are several bodies of interconnected ideas that fit perfectly into an overarching artistic vision, from nearly two decades. They represent Ekpuk’s attempt to translate his experiences and the larger human experience, bearing the burden of contemplation, history, and contemporaneity.”

 

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, PhD

Curator of African Art,

The Hood Museum of Art,

Dartmouth College, New Hampshire

---

[i] Chika Aniakor, “AKA: The Conquests of An Artistic Vision,” AKA 89 [4thannual exhibition catalogue] (Enugu: AKA, 1989), 8.

Victor Ekpuk, Idaresit (Joyful Heart), 2004, acrylic on canvas, 48″x24″

About VICTOR EKPUK: 

 

VICTOR EKPUK’s art began as an exploration of

nsibidi “traditional” graphics and writing systems in Nigeria, and has since evolved to embrace a wider spectrum of meaning that is rooted in African and global contemporary art discourses.  His artwork is in the permanent collection of Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, Newark Museum, The World Bank, and University of Maryland University College Art.

The central theme of Ekpuk’s work is the exploration of relationships, challenges, and responses to changes that characterize the contemporary human condition.  Of particular interest to his oevre is nsibidi, an indigenous African system of writing that employs graphic signs and codes to convey concepts. Inspired by these ancient writings, the forms in his works are reduced to a basic essence resulting in new symbols or codes in script-like drawings.