Press Release
GroupnShow
October 15 ? December 31, 2020
Skoto Gallery isnpleased to present a Group Show of paintings, drawings, sculpture and mixednmedia work. The exhibition will open tonthe public on Thursday, October 15, 2-6pm.
Thisnexhibition brings together the works of thirteen artists including Jelili Atiku. Osi Audu. Nanette Carter. Wadsworth Jarrell. Aime Mpane.nTrokon Nagbe. Afi Nayo. Chriss Nwobu. David Rich. Katherine Taylor. Pefura.nJuliana Zevallos.
Despite their varied experiences working across different timenperiods each of these artists represents a resonant voice that achieves its ownndistinction and clarity amidst fluxional experiences. Their creative voices arensimultaneously reclamatory, instrumental, reconstructive if not interrogativenand in some cases seek to retrieve both individual and collective memory.
Osi Audu has consistently maintained a persistentnfocus on the dynamic relationship between shape, form and color while remainingnfirmly rooted in the Yoruba philosophical concept that the human headnencompasses a duality of spirit and matter, mind and body. The notion of thensubconscious is a powerful one and can be very much seen in his work?s highnoriginality.
Nanette Carter continues her long-standing commitment to thenexploration of a completely personal and original style of abstraction whosentrue significance lies not merely in formal arrangement but in spiritualnmeaning that fuels the intangible ideas around human nature while simultaneouslynmeditating on the current state of affairs in society. A leading member of herngeneration whose work attempt to reconcile contradictory human imperatives, shenstrives to forge a new vocabulary in abstraction and collage that speaksneloquently to the universal human experience. Her work was included in the 2017nlandmark exhibition Magnetic Fields:nExpanding American Abstraction, 1960 to Today: a survey exhibition ofnAfrican-American female artists who create abstract works, organized by thenKemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri and travelled tonWashington DC and St. Petersburg, Florida.
Aime Mpane is a warrior-artist whose work embodies the pain andngrace of human conflict instigated by colonial legacies in his homeland ? DRnCongo. He utilizes the extreme gesture and emotionality of his medium bynslashing, chipping and chopping with the adze ? a traditionalnwood carving tool – on wood panel, illuminating the various faces of war inntheir raw, awkward and blunt forms evocative of the diverse states of the humanncondition from the political to the metaphysical – a fit metaphor for thenviolence and dire conditions that have befallen the country throughout most ofnits modern history.
Trokon Nagbe draws on themes of memory, migration, history and the passagenof time through the filter of personal experience. Firmly rooted in anframework of references that reflect his African heritage, he strives to pushnthe bounds of his aesthetic while exploring intricate, and often paradoxical,nrelationship between the material and the spiritual, collective and thenindividual identity as well as the interior and the exterior. The visualnresonance in his work is undeniable attesting to his ability to seamlessly fusenancient and modern concepts and aesthetic on new and innovative modes ofnrepresentation while still contesting the meanings of the post-modern encounternbetween tradition and modernity.
Afi Nayo reflects a longstandingncommitment to extracting textured patterns with mosaic-like delicacy andncosmopolitan refinement from a complex language of symbols and signs drawn fromnthe unconscious to obtain a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality,nrevealing a reality behind the visible things around us. Symbols becomenpatterns and then symbols again as the imagery vacillates between seen andnunseen, between the remembered and the disassociated, revealing minute treasuresnfor those who linger long enough to see them revealed.
Chriss Aghana Nwobu is annaward-winning Nigerian visual artist and photographer. He is an experimentalnartist whose work is mainly lens-based but he extensively explores the use ofndifferent objects within his environment as props or installations. A foundingnmember of Invisible Borders Trans-Africa Photography Project, his work has beennexhibited in museums and galleries across Europe, USA and Africa. He won thenBest Photo Story award category at the 2012 ?Intimate Lens? Ethnographic Filmnand Photography Festival in Caserta, Italy and he is also a nominee for thenprestigious Prix-Pictet Award in Switzerland..
Over the past four decades David Rich has demonstrated a remarkable ability to explore texture, color, structure and the process of makingnart in endlessly inventive ways. Arising from anparticular intersection of abstraction, neighborhood interactions and livednexperience, his work reflects a decidedly impure and vernacular approach tonpainting. The focus is not on literal description but rather on attitude andnpresence, evincing a lyrical beauty and an aura of spontaneity that belies itsnsurprising seamlessness between the spiritual and physical worlds. His work advances creative dialogue with an abiding confidence that visualnimages can still communicate powerful emotional and spiritual values innaddition to formal aesthetics.
Born 1967 in Paris of Cameroonian parents, Pefura is an architect by training andnan artist by profession whose primary focus over the last two decades arenpainting and conceptual installation. His recent work continues to expand onnthe relationship between the body and the nature of spaces, the contrastnbetween large collective spaces and individual compartmentalized spaces as wellnas notions of space as a set of destinations in which people moved between,nmore or less continuously.
Katherine Taylor employs a keen ability to subvert or manipulatenconventions of drawing as a physical object with an awareness of the crucialnrole that the constant process of thinking and rethinking, acting and reactingnplays in the creative process. Though her drawings functions independently fromnher sculptures, they are charged throughout by the tension that arise whennseemingly irreconcilable opposites are fused as the figures and structuresnappear to be made of geometric sculptural forms. The directness of her drawingsnin strong black and gray lines combined with markers evinces deep sensitivitynto light and shadow, volume and space as well as harmony and dissonance.
Juliana Zevallos uses a widenrange of media including her background as a versatile printmaker to createncomplex and poetic works layered with meaning and surface texture where somenoverlapping forms are fully present while other forms are partially obscured.nThey are simple, serene and as matured as thought. Closely viewed, her work isnan invitation for contemplation that strives to reconcile intelligence andnsensibility, knowledge and intuition as well as matter and spirit.
