Osi Audu: Dialogues with African Art

Press Release

October 25 ? December 8, 2018

SkotonGallery is pleased to present Dialoguesnwith African Art, an exhibition of recent drawingsnand paintings by the Nigerian-born artist Osi Audu. This is his fourth solonexhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, October 25th,n6-8pm. The artist will be present.

OsinAudu?s work has consistently maintained a persistent focus on the dynamicnrelationship between shape, form and color while remaining firmly rooted in thenYoruba philosophical concept that the human head encompasses a duality ofnspirit and matter, mind and body. The notion of the subconscious is a powerful one and can be verynmuch seen in his work?s high originality. Tonthe artist: ?There is a Yoruba thought that consciousness,nreferred to as the ?head,? has both a physical dimension called the ?outernhead? and a non-physical one: ?the inner head.? The visual implications ofnconcepts like this are what I find intriguing. The title Self-Portrait innmy work is about the portrait of the intangible self, rather than a literalnportrait of the artist?.

This exhibition of twenty strong worksnbuild on the artist?s exploration of abstract geometric possibilities in traditionalnAfrican art. While he does not consciously seek continuity with Africa?s richncultural past, they each reveal astonishing affinities with different aspectsnof it, resulting in surprising consonances. One hasnthe sense that he is constantly searching for the potentials of his medium andnletting the process uncover an image that seems to come to the surface afternlong gestation. And as stated by the artist regarding his creative process: ?Inexplore the light sheen of graphite, the matte, light absorbing quality ofnblack pastel, the white of paper and canvas, as well as the visually affectingninteractions of colors to investigate form and its evocative potential tonsuggest or hint at something about the shape of the head?. Audu?s worknexplores ancient and contemporary concepts and aesthetics, combining rigorous compositional organization, sensitivity to texturenand tonality with a deep understanding of art historicalnprecedents to create work that is highly characteristic and clearlynrecognizable.

Osi Audu, anNigerian-born artist, whose work has been shown in numerous internationalnexhibitions including Kwangju Biennale, Venice Biennial, The Africa-Africanexhibition at the Tobu Museum, Japan and the Museum of the Mind at the BritishnMuseum was educated in Nigeria and the United States. His work is in severalnpublic and private collections including the Smithsonian Institution?s NationalnMuseum of African Art, Washington DC; The Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey,nThe British Museum, Horniman Museum and Wellcome Trust, all in London; The HoodnMuseum at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire and the Mott-Warsh Collection,nFlint, Michigan. Corporate collections include SONY Classical, New York; FidelitynInvestment Corporation, Boston, Massachusetts, and the Schmidt Bank in Germany.nHe presently lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York

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The exhibition is accompanied by a full colorncatalogue. Below are excerpts from essays in the catalogue.

Audu is, in effect, reclaimingnabstraction. Through the language of abstraction, Audu seeks to create ancontainer or a frame for the intangible that is the self. In dialogue withnworks of African art that are themselves symbolic representations of concepts,nhe situates his geometric abstraction firmly within African ontologies. And inndoing so, he also makes tangible the intangible, or perhaps hidden, thenpresence of African sculpture within the nlegacy of Western modernism.

– Christa Clarke, Ph. D., Senior Curator,nArts of Global Africa, Newark Museum

This new corpus builds on then?Self-Portrait? series, which made its debut in 2015 and in which Audunconsiders the psychological makeup of the abstract or anonymous individual. Innthe new works, he extends this premise, however, to a consideration of thendialogical self. It is one in which he seeks the recognizable but also thencollective as revealed in historical African art forms in dialogue with thenartist.

– Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, Ph. D.,nCurator of African art, Cleveland Museum of Art

Osi Audu?s own paintings and drawingsnare composed of bending plains of primary colors or matte black, pastel andnglistening graphite (resembling positive or negative space), together they  suggest the conundrum of the two-sidednMoebius that can confuse interior and exterior or arcane geometric diagrams andnbecome inscrutably beautiful machines of human consciousness, performing a kindnof geometric yoga.

– Glen Mannisto, Poet, art journalist, and frequentncontributor to Detroit Art Review

It is not difficult to notice how henperceptively deconstructs a Yoruba Shango staff (figs. 1a, 1b), Egungunnheaddress (figs. 2a, 2b), Ejagham headdress (figs. 3a, 3b) or a Tabwa figuren(figs. 4a, 4b) into amalgamation of simple geometric shapes, complexly combinednand manipulated to achieve both greater aesthetic and intellectual effect.

– Nii O. Quarcoopome, Ph. D., Co-ChiefnCurator and Department Head, Africa, Oceanic nand the Indigenous Americas, Detroit Institute of Arts.

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