“Thinking Through Drawing” Exhibition

Sapar Contemporary

This event has ended.

Thinking Through Drawing brings together artists Phoebe Boswell (UK/Kenya), Kristoff Kintera (Czech Republic), Alejandro Magdallenes (Mexico), and Uthman Wahaab (Nigeria/Lagos) in an exhibition that highlights the various drawing methods from a charcoal wall drawing to “sketching” with wires and found electric objects.
Magdallenes uses figures to lend a poetic yet humorous take on the art world and art making today in his series of ink on paper titled “Art History in 100 Drawings”.
Wahaab’s collection of mixed media paintings and drawings from his show “Phenomenal Woman” is a celebration of body, form, and beauty beyond the accepted understanding of what is contemporarily considered physically ideal. Boswell’s self-portrait wall drawing from her show “Take Me to the Lighthouse” weaves a self-referential narrative of trauma, grief, and healing into a wider exploration of the interiority of the female body through nature and the sublime. Kintera refers to his assemblages of wires, mesh, and other industrial material in drawing or sketching because the process of creating them is akin to thinking on paper.

Phoebe Boswell (b. 1982, Kenya) lives and works in London. Born in Nairobi and brought up as an expatriate in the Middle East, she combines traditional draftswomanship and digital technology to create drawings, animations and installations. Boswell studied Painting at the Slade School of Art and 2D Animation at Central St Martins, London. She was nominated/shortlisted for the Art Foundation’s Animation Fellowship 2012, and was the first recipient of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship, which she used to produce her immersive installation The Matter of Memory; it first showed alongside work by John Akomfrah and Rashaad Newsome at Carroll / Fletcher Gallery, London in 2014. Boswell is currently an artist-in-residence at Somerset House Studios in London.

Krištof Kintera (b. 1973, Prague, Czech Republic) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. Today, Kristof Kintera is one of the most respected artists working in the Czech Republic. His artworks push the boundaries of contemporary sculpture. His practice is diverse and includes large public installations, small kinetic devices, and 3D sketches that the artist refers to as “drawings”. He deals with appropriation and reuse of the found objects and transformation of everyday things. Kintera infuses his objects with anthropomorphic qualities and re-imagines them as living organisms. He uncovers the hidden spirituality in ordinary often discarded objects and reinvents their mythologies imagining absurd possibilities and unrealistic uses.

Alejandro Magallenes (b. 1971, Mexico City) is internationally recognized as a graphic designer, illustrator, poet, and artist. Magallenes studied Graphic Design at the National School of Plastic Arts of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Magallanes experiments with poetry, animation/videos in his sculptures, photographs, and drawings.
His work has been published in design books, such as: Graphic Agitation II (Phaidon), A Concise History Of Graphic Design (Thames & Hudson), All Men Are Brothers (Hesign), Graphic Design Since 1950 (Thames & Hudson), 401 Design Meditations: Wisdom, Insights, And Intriguing Thoughts From 150 Leading Designers, Latin American Graphic Design (Taschen). These books have been published in China, France, Germany and Spain. He has exhibited his work in Poland, Japan, Hungary, Argentina, China, Holland, Czech Republic, Spain, Canada, Belgium, France, the United States, Venezuela, Slovenia, Russia, Iran, Italy, Croatia and Mexico.

Uthman Wahaab (b. 1983, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria) received a degree in Fine Art from the School of Art, Design and Printing, Yaba College of Technology,
Lagos. Wahaab is an artist who possesses an overarching interest in social phenomenon; yet, he is not concerned with a consistent use of medium or even singular aesthetic style. Utilizing the disciplines of painting, graphics design, film, photography, sculpture and installation, Wahaab’s work positions a critical lens at social phenomenon not only within Africa; but also, globally. He is keenly critical of the impact of technology on shifting cultural structures, and the complex conundrum of navigating traditional values and social and economic progress. Each series is an in depth analysis of a new sociological study, and an exciting study manipulating new material. Wahaab’s range in style, medium, and process is vast and impressive; he is an artist who both welcomes and successfully wrangles new ideas and modes of art making.