A-ARTs: Mohammed's pointillism of 'discipline, absurdity...' as Toys For Troys

2022 Harley Davidson CVO Road glide Roadmaster ( nails on board, automobile paint and acrylic, 88 x 46 inches), by Dauda Mohammed.

IN simple subjects and themes for art, some artists create mountainous interest to boost art appreciation. Dauda Mohammed is one of such artists as his works on two-wheel art bring freshness to the Lagos art space.

Scheduled to open as his solo art exhibition titled Toys For Troys, showing from September 2-12, 2023 at Signature Beyond Art Gallery, 107, Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos Island, the works also come with uncommon textures. Mohammed applies mixed media in pointillism technique with such materials as wood nails on board, with automobile paints and acrylic.

From Mohammed's Artist Statement: "In my work, I aim to explore themes of various dynamic subjects with five or more colours using 3dimensional objects like wood nails, pushpins, cotton buds, screw e.t.c to make something digital. I enjoy making work that requires a physical proximity, working from intangible to the tangible by invoking these mediums to generate a dialogue that has something to do with the effort, repetition, focus, discipline, absurdity and love that went into its making.

"I enjoy when you look at the medium at close range seeing the homogeneous arrangement of the medium clearly as an object and when observe from afar seeing the medium as image.

"My goal is to inspire those who see my work to look more carefully at the work from close range also from a distance and feel something in the process."

The introduction texts of the exhibition explained the inspiration behind the thematic choice of the artist: "In ancient Greek literature, troy Is portrayed as a powerful kingdom of heroic age, a mystic era when monsters roamed the earth and gods interacted directly with humans," interdisciplinary artist, Ibiok Bright wrote. "Troy was an ancient city located at Hissarlik in present day Turkey, 30 kilometers (19 miles) south-west of Canakkale and about 6 kilometers (4 miles) east of Aegean Sea. It is known as the setting for the Trojan war."

Ibiok's thoughts on the theme: "Troy is a powerful kingdom with heroes like Hector who was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan war. Hector led the Trojan warriors and their allies in defense of Troy, killing countless Greek warriors. He was ultimately killed by Achilles who later dragged his dead body around the city of troy behind his chariot. The Trojan war erupted because Helen a queen of Sparta was abducted by Paris, The son of Troy’s King Priam.

"When you talk about Troy, you are talking about a powerful kingdom with powerful and heroic warriors like Hector. If they were to be around today, what would be their toys? Definitely, it has to be unique, strong, durable, elegant, powerful and iconic and that will most definitely be the Harley Davidson and vespa.

"Have you ever wondered how Harley Davidson bikes became the icons they are today? It began in a small shed in Milwaukee back in the early 1900s. After drawing up plans for a small engine designed to fit in a regular bike frame, William S. Harley worked with Arthur and Walter Davidson to build this “motorbicycle”. They finished the first model in 1903. They later created a bigger engine and loop frame design.

"By 1906 Harley and the Davidson brothers moved out of their shed into their first factory, which was located at the current site of Harley Davidson headquarters. They produced 50 motorcycles during their first year in the factory 10 times more than the year before, by 1907 they produced 150 motorcycles and began selling them to police departments, The company continued to grow and improve yearly, new features and designs were constantly being introduced keeping up with the growing demands for Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson produced over 20,000 motorcycles for the U.S military during world war 1 and one of the two American motorcycle companies to survive the great depression. In world war 2, They produced over 90,000 motorcycles to use in the war, Harley Davidson was awarded 2 army-navy “E” awards for excellence in production, in honor of their effort during the war.

"Over 119 years, Harley Davidson has grown from its humble beginning to an American icon. No matter how many things have changed over the years one thing has always remained the same, Harley Davidson’s commission to producing a high quality, iconic, elegant, and innovative bike.

"Using a 1.5 (one and half) inch nails and some other variety of nails/screws painted with automobile nails and protective coat, I was able to bring back to life some of these iconic motorbikes dating from 1900 to date together with vespa an Italian luxury brand of scooters manufactured by Piaggio. The name means wasp in Italian, the vespa has evolved from a single model motor scooter manufactured in 1946 by Piaggio and co. From their inception, vespa scooters have been known for their painted, pressed, steel unibody which combines in a unified structural unit, a complete cowling for the engine (enclosing the engine mechanism and concealing dirt and grease) a floor board providing foot protection and a prominent front fairing providing wind protection.

"Like with the exponent of pointillism, (in my opinion), I have seen the African (George’s- Pierre Seurat) in Dauda’s application of different three-dimensional ornamented-colored objects like, pushpins, screws, nails, bottle-tops, etc. to achieve same technique.

"With warm heart of concern after years of effective studio practice, Dauda Mohammed brings forth a collection of works such as this to harness the awareness of his audience about heroism, invention, and creativity. This is a course that has took him and his representative, Mr. Akar Abdulrahman of the (Signature Beyond Gallery), tremendous two years of preparation to reach this point to exhibit. To this, I will say congratulations to him: “holding his course” with hopes high, the sky is just the beginning...And to his esteem audience with heroic mind of receptivity, I will say, happy viewing."

Dauda Ademola Mohammed was born in Jos, Nigeria in 1974. He holds a degree in Biochemistry from University of Ilorin and also a certificate in Graphics and 3d Animation from Aptech (Arena Multimedia).

As a self-taught artist, he spent a period of 12 years in the banking industry before leaving in 2015 to concentrate on his art working in a variety of media including painting and drawing with acrylic and oil paints. Recently, he focused on using 3dimensional objects like cotton buds, pushpins, screw, Nails, Bottle tops, Drilling on woods and plastics to make amazing artworks. His work combines creativity along with hours of diligent application using some computer graphic applications and Photoshop to break an image down to a very low resolution and forces the computer to make the image out of only five colors (red, blue, yellow, black and white), then uses a grid map to show where to stick the object row by row.

Translucent S.I. Media management agency for artists and art galleries