Osi Audu: Magic Box

Press Release

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present Magic Box, an exhibition of recent drawings and paintings by the Nigeria-born artist Osi Audu. This is his sixth solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, March 20th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.

Osi Audu’s recent work builds on his long-standing exploration of the dynamic relationship between line, form and color while remaining firmly rooted in the Yoruba philosophical concept of the human head as the locus of dreams, imagination and phenomenal experiences. Like the Magic Box, the human head holds a very powerful fascination for the artist, which has to do with its significance as a site of one’s identity and seat of the brain which coordinates the activities of the body including perception and communication. He uses his poetic sensibility effectively to explore his highly conceptual imagery of the head as a container of consciousness, combining minimalist geometric and organic forms with achromatic and contrasting colors to further underscore the interplay of the conscious, subconscious and superconscious in experiential responses, thereby obliging the viewer to look beyond the surface for deeper meanings.

Osi Audu’s work demonstrates unassuming techniques and depth of resonance. He combines complex compositional organization with spatial dynamics that eschew flatness, with a strong conviction in the spiritual energy of color to create works that continue to refine and re-define the language of abstraction. There is a physical as well as an emotional presence in his work that brings together a hierarchy of forms drawn from a range of sources including nature, classical African art, geometry and science combined with a willingness to reduce forms and ideas to their essence while simultaneously preserving an overall fluency, energy and beauty inherent throughout the body of work in this exhibition. There is a clarity of form in his work that is highly characteristic and easily recognizable.

Osi Audu’s work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions including Kwangju Biennale; Venice Biennale; The Africa-America exhibition at the Tobu Museum, Japan and the Museum of the Mind at the British Museum. He was educated in Nigeria and the United States. His work is in several public and private collections including the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, The Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ. The British Museum, Horniman Museum and Wellcome Trust, all in London; The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire and the Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint. Michigan, among others. Corporate collections include SONY Classical, New York; Fidelity Investment Corporation, Boston, MA