Under the direction of Sabo Kpade, the KÓ Gallery in Lagos is presenting until August 19, 2021 two independent exhibitions by artists Busayo Lawal and E.D. Adegoke under the theme of « Life in Asymmetry » and « The Age of Dreams » respectively.
Busayo Lawal: « Life in Asymmetry »
© la Galerie de KÓ
For over twenty years, Busayo Lawal has been examining the conventions of visual vocabularies to challenge conventional ideas about the time-space continuum, movement and force.
In his first major exhibition in Nigeria, titled « Life in Asymmetry », Busayo Lawal has created a foundational body of work that builds on his longstanding fixation with the rich woven tapestries of ASO OKE, the ceremonial woven fabric that is unique to the Yoruba peoples of West Africa and its diaspora. Whether in large-scale canvases or drawings on paper, Busayo Lawal has reused in new and creative structures the patterns and shading planes that are fundamental to an enduring custom.
« Life in Asymmetry » is Busayo Lawal‘s creative statement in a big way. The intricacies of the fabric and the overwhelming patterns it structures tell the stories of specialness and reason, devotion and social chronicles, courage and fate.
E.D. Agegoke: « The Age of Dreams »
© la Galerie de KÓ
The works in the exhibition « The Age of Dreams » by artist E.D. Adegoke are considered in two classifications: the main set which is formalized and less lavishly designed positions than the following set, whose costumed figures recommend a height from particularity to allegory. Perhaps not a determined way of dealing with the unification of the black figure in the Western group, the artworks in « The Age of Dreams » exhibition exist in a dreaded dark setting, given that Nigeria is the most populous black nation in the world.
These paintings are guided by the conventional rigor of portraiture, as well as an innovative aspiration to blackness. They undoubtedly help to reinforce the historical backdrop of changes in the contemporary Nigerian image. The artworks of artist E.D.Adegoke function as stylistic systems that aim to regularize a shadow boundary and the impression it gives. Hyper-darkness is conveyed as an instrument of exposure in the space between authenticity and representation.
In Nigeria as in Africa, contested constructions of power and organization are less drawn by race and shadow, and more often directed by gender and ethnicity. Indeed, even without the contact and weight of race-based philosophies, the artist’s hyper-black figures hold the desperation and meaning corresponding to confidence and assurance by testing preconceived notions of magnificence, gender, and personality.
The exhibitions « Life in Asymmetry » by artist Busayo Lawal and « The Age of Dreams » by E.D. Agegoke are open until August 19, 2021 at the KÓ Gallery in Lagos.