'Simple Materials, Startling Effects'

A review of ‘Much Strings Attached’ at the arc Gallery

Emotional Attachment II (2010)

Anyone who was lucky enough to be present at our converted barge gallery in the sweltering sunshine of the evening of Thursday 24th June 2010 would have been privileged to see some of the most exquisite contemporary artwork to go on show at any London gallery this year. This was the private viewing of our newest exhibition, ‘Much Strings Attached’: a display of the latest mixed-media works by contemporary Nigerian artist Uchay Joel Chima. This was, by far, my favourite exhibition to take place so far at arc this year, and the reason for this is twofold. Firstly, on a purely visual level, it is my contention that Chima’s stunning canvases, which challenge the viewer’s immediate visual assumptions with their depth and profundity, are the most aesthetically appealing work to be displayed at arc thus far this year. 

Moreover, both I and many of the viewers who attended Thursday’s opening night agreed that, of all the exhibitions that have thus far taken place as part of our 2010 programme: Nigeria 50: Art of a Nation, Chima’s is the one that most successfully and most succinctly marries together its visual and thematic dimensions. In other words that, as opposed to ‘Elegant Urban Decay’ in which the works were not particularly concerned with broader social or intellectual issues, or, at the other extreme, ‘We’ve Already Paid’ in which the overarching themes were so ambitious and had such magnitude that they came to overpower the works themselves as aesthetic artefacts in their own right, in this exhibition, Chima has deftly coalesced his ideas about society and human relationships together with his impressive aesthetics in way which has meant that the works never became overshadowed by their intellectual underpinnings. 

Wellwishers I (2010)

Colour is a vital aspect of Chima’s art, and, within this new body of work, he has clearly used colour to its most advantageous effects. For example, in Wellwishers I a progression is made from the left to the right side of the canvas from rosy hues through to a limey white to produce a sense of movement that means that the figures themselves almost appear to be somehow animate. Chima also appears to be very up on his colour theory, in some places using complimentary colours, such as the blue and yellow palate of Relationship Blues to their most harmonious effect, whilst in other works creating awkwardly discordant effects through putting together colours that are conventionally thought to clash, such as his use of red and purple in Dance of Intimacy II. There were even comparisons made between Chima’s use of colour and that of the American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, in that, in a piece such as Relationship Blues, much the same as in Rothko’s celebrated works, what initially appears to be a substantial block of one colour is in fact constructed through an uncountable number of colours and shades, thereby creating a real sense of plunging into unfathomable depths. 

Dance of Intimacy II (2010)

Kirsty, a particularly incisive viewer who attended last Thursday’s exhibition, commented on what, for want of a better term, I will now call Chima’s ‘potentially endless re-viewablility’: that, in her words, ‘you can look and look and look and still never see enough’. Indeed, the interplay of clarity and form in Chima’s work means that difficult to embrace each piece in its absolute totality (which is again a connection that can be made with the work of Rothko), and thus the more you look at the canvas, the more you being to see something totally different to what you first felt you saw in the image. Thus, Chima’s images ‘change’ depending on your perspective and where you are standing in relation to the painting. For example, although undeniably figurative, there is also a sense in which a piece such as Relationship Blues, with its mixture of turquoise, indigo and cobalt that dominate the canvas (fringing into sandy tones only at the right hand edge) could almost be construed as depicting an aerial view of a seascape, and, indeed, this is enhanced by the use of interwoven string characteristic of all the work in this exhibition, as in this case creates an image that resembles the rippling of water. Kirsty also made the observation that in overall effect, Chima’s work is reminiscent of C.E.V. noise simulation – that phenomenon we experience when we close our eyes and see a seemingly random field of pointillistic regions of light, shade and colour, with no apparent shape or order.

Relationship Blues (2010)

Chima’s figurative work in this exhibition appears to be of two main types. In the first, figures are heavily delineated – outlined with thick rope and string, for example in works such We Belong Together. However, in the second type, which is perhaps best exemplified by the diptych Emotional Attachment I and II, the figures are depicted with far more subtly, appearing only as dark shadows. Asked which approach seemed more successful in terms of the Chima’s overarching themes – community, intimacy, collective responsibility – many views felt that it was the more subtle work that best reflected this concerns. For example, the figures of the Emotional Attachment pieces were compared to those people we have daily, yet unspoken contact with - people with whom share our bus or train journey to work, shop assistants who serve us on a weekly basis. For most of the time, these people remain all but ‘shadows’ in our lives until either one of two things happens: either they disappear from their usual context and thus we come to recognise them through their absence, or, conversely, we come across these people out of place and out of time (usually causing us to do a ‘double-take’) and are thereby forced to acknowledge our relationship with them: ‘I know that person!’, ‘Where do I know them from?’, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that face before!’. Thus these secreted and submerged figures, once (re)discovered, work particularly well as an aide memoir of elapsed and veiled relationships, commitments and social duties that we may ourselves not have been fully conscious of. 

We Belong Together (2010)

Thus, overall, in the words of one of last Thursday’s viewers, Chima has used ‘simple material to startling effects’ in order to remind us that – from families to societies to global communities – we are indeed attached with many strings, whether would like to admit it, or not.

Christopher Yiannitsaros 

arc Research Officer


To read a recent interview with Uchay Joel Chima, please click here.
To view the brochure for this exhibition, please click here.