It takes the rich trajectory of an artist to retrospect in visual culture, so suggests one of the most-awaited solo art exhibitions on the Lagos art circuit. The exhibiting artist, Abiodun Olaku’s iconic part in the history of contemporary African art strengthens his first solo in 20 years.
The exhibition titled Odyssey: A Retrospective of Drawings and Paintings, showing from October 19, 2024 ending November 3, 2024 at National Museum Onikan Lagos comes after his last show ‘Stimulus’, at Terra Kulture, Victoria Island, in 2004. Being organised by Red Heritage, Odyssey comes at a time when the dynamics of art appreciation is transiting across generations. Given Olaku’s antecedence of a blossom career that bridges modern and contemporary Nigerian art, Odyssey also comes with loaded critical and commercial values.
That trajectory and subsistence of Olaku has been captured by quite a number of scholars who contributed to the critical context of Odyssey. In fact, Frank Ugiomoh, a professor, highlighted the artist’s career as a bridge between two generations of Nigerian artists. “Abiodun Olaku (b. 1958) is a highly patronised artist who, as a contemporary artist, has made a significant transition between the old masters and the current generation of artists in the art history of Nigeria,” Ugiomoh noted. “His journey, groomed under the tutelage of Yusuf Grillo (1934-2021), one of Nigeria’s great masters, is a testament to his untrammelled adherence to the tenets of academic tradition amidst minor stylistic deflections.”
From his piece titled ‘The Contours of Forms and Its Content in Abiodun Olaku’s Work’, Ugiomoh, a revered art historian dissected the theme of the exhibition within the retrospective context for better understanding of the much awaited outing of Olaku, 20 years after the artist’s last solo. “His disciplined commitment to the studio, where he is ever-spinning metaphors that now define him, remains striking, hence the title of this exhibition – Odyssey. Olaku belongs to a category of top high-end artists imbued with talent and skills to conceptualise and make sought-after works in both local and global art market scenes,” the professor said.
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Perhaps, the artist’s skills in celebrating nature have been the energies from which his art keeps getting attention in over four decades of his studio practice. “Abiodun Olaku’s scenic paintings are lyrical replicas of the natural environment,” Kunle Filani, a professor noted. Describing the works as “verities painted in poetry,” Filani, a renowned art scholar noted that the meticulous rendition of Olaku’s dawn and dusk sceneries “conceived out of a picturesque reality that sometimes obfuscates the actuality of nature.”
Filani tracked Olaku’s forty years of studio practice and argued that the artist represents the greatness of his alma mater. “In the four decades of his creative sojourn, Olaku dwelled faithfully within the ambience of the naturalistic style that he imbibed while training at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos. He graduated with distinction and remains one of the best creative ambassadors of his famous alma mater.”
In his contribution titled ‘Voyage Of Adventure: Abiodun Olaku and the Poetics of Nature,’ Filani highlighted how the artist “demonstrated abundant skills in the rendition of daylight sceneries and painted more thematic compositions that he hardly explored.” Filani cited one of the paintings as an example of mastery in basic art creation. “He showed good mastery of compositional arrangement, colour management and structural correctness in a recent painting titled Ipade. The painting celebrates the Eyo masquerade, and it was dedicated to the memory of Yusuf Grillo, the iconic painter of Yoruba images, who was one of the most memorable artists Nigeria ever produced.”
The mastery of light as a key element in Olaku’s paintings attracted the attention of another writer, Michael Newberry who captured the artist’s passion in application of both natural and other lights. “A fascinating literal and symbolic result is how Olaku integrates “a thousand points of light” represented by both man-made lights and the natural light of the heavens,” Newberry wrote in the introductory essay to Odyssey titled, ‘The Extraordinary Art of Abiodun Olaku. “In many of his paintings, he shows us beautiful twilight scenes announcing either dawn or evening. The far-receding sky has an expansive dimmed brilliance that sets the tone for sparks of human contribution: lit windows, outdoor braziers, street lamps, or the headlights and backlights of vehicles.”
Olaku is a former vice president of Guild of Professional Fine Artists of Nigeria (GFA) and a foundation member of one of Nigeria’s oldest group studios, Universal Studios of Art (USA) located within the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos.
