A Review of 'Elegant Urban Decay' at the arc Gallery
Dance of the Masquerade (2010)
Crowds and dancing were both big themes at the private viewing of ‘Elegant Urban Decay’ which took place at arc Gallery on Thursday 20th May 2010. The exhibition of recent works by the Nigerian artist Nymeike Onwuka was of particular significance to us art arc, as it marked the commencement of our 2010 programme, Nigeria 50: Art of a Nation. The idea of ‘the crowd’ played an important role on in the show in two respects. Firstly, the there was the crowd of people who attended the viewing, and secondly, crowds were present in the sense that, in Onwuka’s paintings of African troupe dancers, the central female figure of image is painted as if somehow emerging or singled out from the dancing crowd that surrounds her (suggested merely though hazy outlines and faded patches of colour). However, what I was surprised to discover was that many of the viewers did not necessarily interpret the faded backgrounds as a crowd and had various other ideas of what these figures might imply - with suggestions ranging from the faded figures depicting the different steps in the dance being performed to the theory that they portray ghostly revenants. This I felt was interesting as, above all else, it certainly highlights the generic instability of Owunka’s figurative work which takes form in the contrast between the extreme, almost photographic realism of the main figures (especially their faces), and the fantastic, obscure and ghostly background images.
As well as the conflicting responses to what Onwuka’s work actually depicts, I was also taken aback at just how varied responses were as to the question of whether viewer’s were impressed with the work or not. For example, one viewer remained unconvinced of his work when considered within the context outlined by Onwuka himself in his own artist’s statement. She felt that, if the impetus of Onwuka’s work was the celebration of the splendour of decay as opposed to considering it as a destructive and depressing phenomenon in life, then the absence of blues, greens and other bright colours meant that the paintings, for want of a better word, ‘failed’ in this respect. In other words, for her, the paintings served only as a painful reminder of environmental and bodily decay. Whilst it is certainly true that, apart from colourful example of Aju, the works in the exhibition adhered to a tightly limited palate of browns, ochres, greys, blacks, whites and reds, my counterargument would be that his use of scarlet red is so evocative that paintings require no other colours in their suggestion of celebration. Indeed, for me, red (particularly those intense scarlet shades that fringe into fuchsia-pink) is perhaps the most redolent colour there is, containing within itself all those heady resonances of life, blood, sexuality and sensuality. At the other end of the scale, another viewer suggested that ‘Elegant Urban Decay’, as a title, didn’t quite go far enough to emphasis the joyous and celebratory aspect of Onwuka’s paintings, especially his series depicting Nigerian troupe dancers.
Aju (2010)
Having been familiar with the paintings of display for some time now, for me, one of the most positive aspects of attending the private viewing is the opportunity to hear what others have to say about the work and, moreover, to witness what fresh observations are made about the work. This is precisely what transpired when one viewer shrewdly remarked that Onwuka only seems to paint his models with their eyes closed: something up until then I had failed to take into consideration. This lead me to contemplate how we usually consider the eyes to be the most expressive part of the face – the 'windows to the soul' as the expression goes – and so we usually think of a face with its eyes shut as blank and void of expression. Thus, what I now find to be the most impressive aspect of Onwuka as an artist is his ability to portray an incredible range of emotion through faces that have the eyes closed by paying astounding close attention to his models’ mouths and lips. As a result, the works on display correspond to a spectrum of emotion ranging from the anguish of Metamorphosis through to the rapturous joy suggested by works such as The 7th Step and Dance of the Masquerade by way of the gentle, meditative contemplation of In the Realm of the Senses.
Metamorphosis (2010)
I was also able to discuss, with a particularly astute viewer, how it is that ‘Elegant Urban Decay’ functions within the overarching aims of arc as a cultural project. Without getting to far into the precarious debate of whether art that originates from this region of Africa can or should be considered as a ‘niche’ market (the term ‘niche’ being, at best, problematic and, at worst, implicitly disparaging), the key point, we both agreed, was about accessibility. This lead me to consider how I myself, during my art education, had undertaken a project which examined issues relating to a preservation/decay binary. During which time the work of ‘mainstream’ or canonical contemporary artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Anya Gallacio and especially that of Marc Quinn, became imperative to my own experiments and final works. Thus, although Onwuka paintings would have been highly appropriate to examine and, indeed, would added to the theoretical underpinnings of my work through providing a beneficially different perspective (particularly since I focused mainly, though not exclusively, on the work of sculptors rather than painters), back in 2004, the work of young, up-and-coming West African artists like Nymeike Onwuka would quite simply not have been accessible to the average college student. Thankfully, things have progressed since then and, indeed, will continue to do so. Through arc’s exhibitions, brochures and other publications, our website, and indeed even through this very blog, my hope is that the college student of 2010 will have the access they need in order to have the broadest range of source material, and a comprehensive and multi-faceted understanding of contemporary art from around the globe.
The Triumph of Dignity (2010)
Christopher Yiannitsaros
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