Opening at Skoto Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, 5FL., New York, NY 10011
April 12 at 6:00pm until May 12 at 8:00pm |
| Oba Ovonramwen of Benin, Nigeria (1888-1914), 2011, reclaimed plastic, metal and wood, 84x66x66 inches. |
Osaretin Ighile’s recent sculpture employs strategies
that grasp notions of artworks as conceptual totalities, multivalent
narratives crafted from a variety of approaches, not just single images
that express big ideas about humanity. His work is informed by a
sophisticated discourse on traditional philosophical concepts, a deep
understanding of the aesthetic and cultural character of the African
continent as well as an invigorating inclination and facility with
various materials and methods. By inventively handling his material
within a formalist sculptural framework, combined with a highly
developed experimental approach to making art, he creates work that is
unorthodox, persistently innovative, and ignores boundaries between
different cultural heritages and socially constructed constraints.
Osaretin Ighile was
born 1965 in Benin City, Nigeria. He studied sculpture, painting and
performance at Auchi Polytechnic, Auchi (1987), and at the University of
Benin (1990), in Nigeria before leaving for the US in early 1990s. He
obtained his MFA (Sculpture) at Queens College, New York in 2011.
Exhibitions include Treasure House, Lagos, 1986; The Burden of an Era,
NYC, 2005, Dakar Biennial, Dakar, Senegal, 2008; Africa Now, World Bank,
Washington DC, 2009. He is in several private and public collections in
the US and abroad including Blachere Foundation, Apt, France, Treasure
House, Lagos; French Embassy, Lagos, Nigeria
In this exhibition, the artist revisits the history of
the ancient Benin Kingdom in Nigeria with an emotionally charged
sculptural installation titled Oba Ovonramwen, 2011- the valiant Oba
whose resistance to British imperialism led to his death in exile in
1914, the looting of his capital and the destruction of the Benin
kingdom that had been in existence since the 13th Century. Upon their
advent in London after the infamous British Expedition in 1897, Benin’s
royal arts were a topic of conversation and speculation. They sparked
immediate interest from major museums and collectors across Europe and
the US. Today, Benin bronzes are among the most exquisite and coveted in
world's history and the kingdom of Benin remains famous for its
sophistication in social engineering and organization.
Osaretin Ighile’s uses mundane materials such as burnt
wood, cut-up plastic crates and metal to create work that is evocative
of the pomp, pageantry and historical myths surrounding the deposed
ruler. He is among a generation of artists who no longer view
colonialism as a constant source of trauma, drawing on a profound
understanding of his culture, his openness to the world and to
diversity, as he re-works art historical tropes for a complex
investigation of the mutable meaning of artistic border in a global
world. By linking past and present in a visually cohesive context that
simultaneously preserve an overall fluency, beauty and humor he
encourages us to explore possibilities of how to understand the world,
how to contemplate the world and how to express the world. His work has
benefited from a growing international awareness of contemporary African
art that has advanced so dramatically in recent years, exposing him to
greater possibilities for new aesthetic thinking. What often seeps
through his work is a playfulness that comes out of the originality of
his artistic strategies.
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