Closing its eventful art appreciation year, Art Pantheon brings shades of artists into a single space for aesthetics and critical engagement of art lovers.
In the last five months, Art Pantheon has proven to be uncommonly active, showing three exhibitions, almost back-to-back, with premium quality art pieces from artists across the contemporary Nigerian cadres. Building on that foundation of showing quality art, Art Pantheon closes 2021 with A Room With All Our Things, a group exhibition of the artworks by Toju Clarke, Abisola Gbadamosi, Tolulope Daramola, Paul Ayihawu and Samuel Vittu.
The exhibition opened on Sunday December 12, 2021 showing till December 26, 2021 (10 am-6 pm daily and 12 noon-6 pm on Sundays) at The Art Pantheon Gallery, 12D Bosun Adekoya Street, Oniru, Lagos.
The exhibition is opened to the public with strict observation to the Lagos State Government’s safety protocols on Covid-19.
Speaking on the exhibition, Nana Sonoiki, director/curator, The Art Pantheon Gallery, said the exhibition offers a room of varied presences, moods and effects.
She noted that the exhibition makes apparent what a shared space of mutual recognition and consolation can be probing into the possibilities such a space can unlock.
In her curatorial note, Sonoiki captured each artist’s skills, in critical and aesthetic values.
She described Toju Clarke as a painter who employs graffito (a technique of scratching) to his canvases, and shows works that utilize muted tones of brown, gold and black to depict attitudes and states of mind.
According to Sonoiki, shadows and scratches lend depth and a convincing air to the faces of Clarke’s subjects. “With intense gazes, deep joy, and torrid aspects, the paintings take a grip of us and do not let go easily; they go with us even after we’ve turned away from the canvas”, she said.
Abisola Gbadamosi on the other hand is a visual and multidisciplinary artist, who brings to her canvases a distinctly feminine energy. “She employs whorls, curves and misty colours to draw us into a bold and sensuous world. In her paintings, we see something of our fire, dreams and desires, and from her we learn not to be frightened by them, and even more importantly, not to apologize for them”, the curator said.
As well, Tolulope Daramola in his realistic portraits employs dark-toned colours to evoke the moodier sides of the human psyche. “The subjects of his paintings are often sombre, contemplative. Their eyes, skin tones, and aspects evince an air of melancholy. In their faces, painted against ordinary everyday settings, we glimpse the deeper textures of human experience”. Sonoiki said.
According to the curator, Paul Ayihawu is a realist painter of stillness and emotion who puts at his service colour, tone and texture to create portraits of quiet, riveting power. “His paintings instill us with silence”, she commented.
But Samuel Vittu in paintings like A Gentle Man’s Rose and This Side of Heaven, shows us the textures and colours of comfort and aspiration, she said. His paintings, according to the curator, are rendered with pastel tones for the background, with warm colours for the heads of his animal-face subjects and soft bright ones for their clothes. “The subjects in his paintings are sure of their place in the world; they are satisfied and positive. And Vittu paints them with such affection that we warm towards them”, she said.
However, while their voices are different, their styles unique, in A Room with All Our Things, the five artists have fashioned a common space for us all, a room of their things, and ours.
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