Bruce Onobrakpeya "Serigraphs, mixed media and installation"
Skoto Gallery
This event has ended.
Skoto Gallery presents Jewels of Nomadic Images an exhibition that include a portfolio of twenty recent serigraphs, paintings, mixed media and installation by the Nigeria artist Bruce Onobrakpeya. This will be his first solo show in New York since the exhibition Where Gods and Mortals Meet at the Museum for African art. The reception is on Thursday, October 18th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.
Bruce Onobrakpeya is a world-renowned master print-maker, painter, sculptor, and pioneer in modern African art, whose long and distinguished career spans more than five decades and continues to astonish with protean audacity. He employs a deep understanding of the cultural history of the African continent combined with a willingness to embrace a continuum of cultural precedents and influences along with an open-ended improvisational sensibility to create work that exploit the fissure between the natural world and the world of imagination. The visual resonance in his work is undeniable, attesting to his ability to seamlessly fuse ancient and modern concepts and aesthetics that pay tribute to the traditional religion, custom and folklore of his heritage while using a wide range of printmaking techniques including those he pioneered.
Included in this exhibition is a selection of recent serigraphs from his Sunshine Period, 1962-67, in which the artist revisited seminal works including Cyclist and the Ram from 1963. Characterized artistically by a bright palette of colors reflecting the radiance of sunlight in the tropics, this period also marked the beginning of his experimentation with innovative artistic practices. The serigraphs make poignant statement on the tension between contained energy and boundless space, as well as, affirm the artist’s awareness of the crucial links between culture, politics and social agency. The mixed media installation Aro Oguan III, 2007-2011 was inspired by Urhobo shrines, and are used to honor the spirits and ancestors of the Urhobo peoples in the Delta region of Nigeria. This installation, a stylized and conceptual rendering of an entire shrine evokes spatial and temporal dimension where the metaphysical and the physica l intersect.
Media
Schedule
from October 18, 2012 to December 01, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-10-18 from 18:00 to 20:00