Contemporary artist Sola Olulode unveils a striking panorama of shimmering, immersive works. In a burst of romance, she depicts through the exhibition “Burning, like the star that showed us to our love” depicts enveloping scenes of love and serenity in a palette of solar colors.
Until September 16, the Ed cross art gallery is hosting this richly romantic presentation by Sola Olulode, who communicates the infatuation felt in a love story through her canvases. The joy and fulfillment shared by the characters depicted in these paintings is conveyed to the viewer with powerful depth. In a series of works ranging from yellows to blues, Sola Olulode paints all the warmth, love and restful light that emanate from couples.
“I paint the things I want to see”, it is to be understood from this statement that the contemporary artist creates paintings that are inspired by her imagination and fantasies. She also works from found imagery and experience to give her paintings an introspective subjective balance and an expansive generosity of color and appeal. In “Burning, like the star that showed us to our love“, Sola Olulode uses an artistic technique akin to storyboarding, to return incessantly to a couple whose idyll blossoms between encounters, late-night dances, romantic rendezvous around a table and quietly tender outbursts.
In addition to this obvious romanticism, the artist’s creations also identify non-binary characters, black queer women and demographic groups for whom pop culture has historically offered few satisfying outlets. This exhibition presents a wide variety of works in terms of scale, materiality and narrative. However, the contemporary artist’s tenacity is clearly perceptible when it comes to materializing the unwavering joy of her characters.
The blue and yellow hues of Sola Olulode’s canvases are smoothly superimposed, offering a large-format chromatic glimpse of sky and space. She used a series of different techniques to design the various pieces in her exhibition. A combination of ink and paint, a superimposition of color between yellow and blue, a scraping of pigment, the use of Batik wax, all these creative methods helped create a surprising depth to the works.
Sola Olulode opts for a particular context in the conception of her works, presenting with great intensity scenes anchored in a physical world, but also in a fantasy and dream world. The paintings in “Burning, like the star that showed us to our love” depict moments that are both special and ordinary, sweet and everyday. It is this straddling of spheres that gives her artistic achievement its uniqueness, plunging the art space into an atmosphere of generative tension.
In her canvases, Sola Olulode manages to recreate the bubbles of love that hover around lovers, evoking the carefree moments of serenity with one’s partner, as well as the pleasure and success of the marginalized communities with which she identifies. These symbolic works filled with happiness and love, displayed on the walls of the Ed Cross gallery, plunge the art space into an immersive and contagious environment where the public is invited to revel with warmth and enthusiasm in the amorous idyll of a couple.