Press Release
Januaryn16 ? February 29, 2020
SkotonGallery is pleased to present The WorldnGives Life, an exhibition of recent mixed-media works by Liberia-born artist Trokon Nagbe. This is hisnfirst solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, January 16th, 6-8pm. The artist will benpresent.
TrokonnNagbe?s work draws on themes of memory, migration, history and the passage of timenthrough the filter of personal experience. Firmlynrooted in a framework of references that reflect hisnAfrican heritage, he strives to push the bounds of his aesthetic whilenexploring intricate, and often paradoxical, relationship between the materialnand the spiritual, collective and the individual identity as well as theninterior and the exterior. Despite the fact that he does not avoid thensignificance of content, they still manage to conveynto the viewer the mental and physical engagement of the artist with his work.
The visual resonance in his work is undeniable attestingnto his ability to seamlessly fuse ancient and modern concepts and aesthetic includingnephemeral performances and sound with stringent emphasis on new and innovativenmodes of representation while still contesting the meanings of thenpost-modern encounter between tradition and modernity: his large-scale works onnrice paper are ripped, burned, and chewed to the point where the resultingnobject expresses both the destructive energy as well as fragile state of one?snbody and soul. It is deeply meditative, dense with infinite nuances thatnexpertly exploits the ambiguity that arises between abstract shapes and imagerynas well as the intriguing play between formal intention and narrative potential.nThe colors and forms of his mixed media work explore other worlds that offernthe viewer a freedom of imagination, interpretation and emotional responses.
Trokon belongs to a generation of artists who witnessed the transition ofnAfrican national liberation movements and found new pathways of creativitynbeyond the trauma of colonialism, war and poverty. His art bears witnessnto a political and philosophical consciousness thatncame out of his experience, drawing on a profound understanding of hisnculture, his openness to the world and to diversity as he re-works artnhistorical tropes for a complex investigation of the mutable meaning ofnartistic border in a global world. Imbued with rich allegory and significance,nhis work reflects subtle understanding of context, respect for tradition andnawareness of the crucial link between function and experimentation.
Born innBassa County, Liberia, West Africa, Trokon Nagbe?s family immigrated to thenUnited States in the 1980s. He received his MFA from the Savannah College ofnArts in 2004 in the Film and Fine Arts program. Selected exhibitions include AbronsnArts at Henry Street Settlement, New York, 2018; Five Myles, Brooklyn, NY,n2018; Studio Museum in Harlem, Post Card Series, 2016; Queens Museum, NY, 2016;nFlow, Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2008; Current Circuit, Espace Lhmond, Paris,nFrance, 2007. He is in private and public collections in the US and abroad.
Trokon Nagbe: The World Gives Life
Recent Work
As an African-born first generation American, originally fromnLiberia, Trokon Nagbe is sensitive to various border-crossings, personalntransformations, erasures, and the evolution of spirit that is endemic to thenimmigrant state. He is on a virtual quest for an essential something that wasnlost in the turbulence of time and history?something he defines as ?soul?. Itnremains the conceptual heart of his ongoing project. This ineffable quest hasntaken various forms and directions while exploring the slippages betweennexperience and desire. The artist employs a wide range of media and processesnincluding ephemeral performances, sound, as well as labor intensive objectnmaking. His work is never an exercise in reductive black and whitenpolemics/politics whether racial or conceptual. What results from hisnshamanistic exploration and manipulation of the visual, is an aesthetic truthninfused with the spiritual and the personal. Trokon?s artistic products,nhowever they are achieved, become markers, non-specific but chargednpower-objects and events along a continuum of discovery. Trokon Nagbe, it seems,nis always in search of an authentic spiritual self, or at least an element ofn?soulfulness? in the aftermath of a traumatic history.
Carl E, Hazlewood, 2018
Brooklyn
