Press Release
Osi Audu
Body of Water
September 7th – October 14th, 2006
Skoto Gallery is pleased to present “Body of Water” an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Osi Audu. This will be the first solo show of the artist’s works in New York. The reception for the artist is scheduled for Thursday, September 7th, 6-8pm.
Osi Audu, a Nigerian born artist, was educated in Nigeria and the United States. For over a decade 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 Wellcome Trust, London and The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Clearly an accomplished artist, Audu’s technical skills and innovative approach to the making of art, allows him to create evocative images with considerable force. His command of drawing, mastery of the paint medium, composition and scale all contribute to his ability to penetrate the level of associative reaction and imbue his subject with a kind of life force. The result is that he restructures, transforms and controls physical existence, as we know it, in his work.
Audu uses his poetic sensibility effectively to explore the theme of the “Body of Water”. He is able to create a personal visual metaphor with a plastic water bottle and the tail of a mermaid, in order to demonstrate the logical continuation and expansion of his interest in the theme of water, and the interrelationship of myth and science. Audu has drawn our attention away from the world of identifiable shapes and colors that we encounter and interpret without thinking. Instead, he invites us to reflect on the ways in which we identify or interpret what we encounter in art and in the world. It is these preoccupations that form the main thrust of Audu’s work and are its real strength.
Audu’s paintings contain a philosophical dimension of profound implications. His creations are a form of intellectual research that engages viewers by teasing them into asking themselves questions about perception, and the process of seeing and understanding. While many contemporary African artists emphasize a link with or a departure from Africa’s traditional past, Audu, by contrast, has developed a unique representational idiom, which guarantees a place for him in the marketplace of modern art.
Audu says, “The artist in exile goes through a mental sifting process: some aspects of his culture become irrelevant in the changed social circumstances. Others may even become meaningless. On the other hand, some things which one had simply taken for granted at home without giving them too much thought, may assume a special significance.”
Rowland Abiodun
John C. Newton Professor of Fine Arts and Black Studies
AmherstCollege
Amherst, Massachusetts
Artist’s Statement
BODY OF WATER
Objects, being man-made can be seen, just like myths, as extensions of the human psyche. Their shapes often refer, and sometimes only metaphorically, to the human image. There seems to be something of ourselves, a self-recognition of sorts, in the objects we collect. We somehow manage to store our memory of past experiences and sentiments in some of these objects as they function very intimately in every facet of our lives whether psychologically, spiritually or practically.
It is my interest in objects as containers that I am exploring in this exhibition titled BODY OF WATER. My focus is on the containers we use for water. I see a correlation between these and the scientific idea that the human body contains 75% water.
The nature and origin of human life obviously remains a mystery. I see myths as metaphoric ways in which the human psyche tries to engage with unfathomable aspects of being. The myth of the mermaid, for example, I believe, is a reference to the fact that human life originated from water, perhaps just the seminal fluid, but there is an echo of Darwin’s theory here; and the fact that scientifically, the human body is 75% water. There is also a lot of research to support the idea that hydration levels in the body have a direct effect on mental performance and the health of the body.
Therefore the human body can be referred to as a “Body of Water” and metaphorically speaking, as a mermaid or merman depending on gender.
Human language is rich in imagery in the way we use objects to refer to states of mind and parts of the body. For example the mind is referred to as marbles in such statements as “loosing one’s marbles”, and the head as the “seat” of consciousness, the state of anxiety as having “butterflies in the stomach”, and a feeling of boldness or bravery as “having the bottle”.
I have always found the imagery implicit in such metaphoric language and myths very fascinating. The physical implications of these concepts can be infinitely engaging, and they provide endless inspiration for my work.
Visually, I am intrigued by the light-refracting qualities of water in a transparent/translucent container. Aesthetically I am exploring the contrast between shiny graphite surfaces and matte, sometimes colorful, pastel surfaces. Occasionally I affect the tension between those two surfaces with the physicality of found objects, i.e. wool, hair, sound recordings or some kinetic mechanism. This has resulted in work that has often been described as two-dimensional sculpture. This is due more to a sculptural attitude in the way I perceive my work as occupying a “three-dimensional” virtual space that is mentally traversable.
My interest in water and the human form stems from my research into OLOKUN MUD ART of Benin during my undergraduate studies at the University of Ife, Nigeria. Beyond the entrancing and gently undulating forms of the human figure, and the obvious associations made between water in the sea, wealth and general well-being, I was fascinated by the way a form of consciousness is assigned to the sea as “Olokun” i.e. goddess of the sea.
We live on a wet planet. In these days when hurricanes, floods, tsunamis and issues of global warming have become rather rampant, through my work I am contributing to the discourse on this phenomenal relationship that exits between water and the human body, and indeed the nature of human consciousness itself.
Osi Audu
New York, July, 2006
