Group Show

Press Release

Group Show

Afi Nayo. Ahmed Nosseir. Bernard Guillot. Bruce Onobrakpeya. Cathy Lebowitz
David Rich. Diako. Fathi Hassan. Katherine Taylor. Khalid Kodi. Lula Mae Blocton
Michael Marshall. Olu Amoda. Piniang. Rosemary Karuga SoHyun Bae.
Sophie Leys. Trokon Nagbe. Uche Okeke. Wosene Kosrof. Juliana Zevallos

May 29 – July 26, 2025

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Group Show, an exhibition that brings together works by a diverse group of established and emerging artists working in a variety of media including painting, drawing, photography and sculpture. The reception is on Thursday, May 29, 6-8pm

With a mix of abstraction and sensitive realism that combines technical accomplishment with strong aesthetic appeal, the artists in this exhibition work across different time-periods and styles. Each of the artists re-imagines history, inheritance and vast possibilities in their work through the lens of individual and collective experiences, offering fresh perspectives that reflect the complexities and realities of contemporary identity. Each artist utilizes a particular rigor and economy which encourages a clarity of intent and simplicity of execution.

Afi Nayo’s (b. 1969, Lome, Togo) work is intensely personal and displays a blend of fragility, modesty and refinement. She uses pyro gravure and mixed media technique on wood panel to create pictures that consist of fantastic dream images, wit and imagination as well as overtones of fantasy and satire. They are dense with sensual surfaces, formal rigors and color harmonies that demonstrate a playful openness to art historical influences, while simultaneously encouraging multiple layers of meanings. She uses a complex language of symbols and signs drawn from the unconscious to obtain a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality. She presently divides her time between Paris, France and Lome, Togo.

Trokon Nagbe draws on themes of memory, migration, history and the passage of time through the filter of personal experience. Firmly rooted in a framework of references that reflect his African heritage, he strives to push the bounds of his aesthetic while exploring intricate, and often paradoxical, relationship between the material and the spiritual, collective and the individual identity as well as the interior and the exterior. The visual resonance in his work is undeniable, attesting to his ability to seamlessly fuse ancient and modern concepts and aesthetic on new and innovative modes of representation while still contesting the meanings of the post-modern encounter between tradition and modernity.

Juliana Zevallos uses a wide range of media including her background as a versatile printmaker to create complex and poetic works layered with meaning and surface texture where some overlapping forms are fully present while other forms are partially obscured. They are simple, serene and as mature as thought. Closely viewed, her work is an invitation for contemplation that strives to reconcile intelligence and sensibility, knowledge and intuition as well as matter and spirit.

Lula Mae Blocton is an African American artist and painter. Color is her passion. What she has been dealing with is the quality of color, looking at it and perceiving it as transparent. Throughout her career she has tried to identify herself through the use of color relationships and structure. Her work can be seen as specific stages of developing towards these goals. Lula’s early work consisted of overlapping geometric patterns creating transparent combinations of color, much like weaving cloth to create a pattern.

Uche Okeke (1933-2016) Renowned for his immense contribution to the development of modern Nigerian art and pioneering visual experimentations with traditional Igbo Uli mural and body design, Uche Okeke’s early drawings in graphite, charcoal or ink are pure meditations upon the nature of line itself. A master of lyrical and sensitive lines, he uses resplendent curves and fluid lines to convey the true harmonies of his artistic vision. His work is in several permanent collections including the National Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Newark Museum, Newark, NJ; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; The High Museum, Atlanta, GA, Iwalewa Haus, Bayreuth, Germany. He was included in the exhibition Stranieri Ovunque-Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Venice Italy.
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