Retro Africa is pleased to present Changing Faces: New Frontiers in Figurative Art, a solo contemporary art exhibition by Alimi Adewale. Curated by Dolly Kola-Balogun and Ugonna Ibe-Ejiogu, the exhibition is on view from April 30th – June 25th at Retro Africa Gallery, Abuja, Nigeria. Featuring paintings, sculptures and installation, Adewale incorporates his mastery of materiality and process as a response to recent global upheavals which include the world-wide pandemic and protests against state-sanctioned police violence in Nigeria, the United Kingdom, United States, and worldwide.
Spread across the two floors of the gallery, Changing Faces will present newly commissioned, site-specific works consisting of more than 15 large scale impasto paintings and medium to extra-large minimalist and abstract sculptures coated in acrylics, vividly diversified by the inclusion of the rich racial varieties that make up our human constitution. An installation of works suspended from the ceiling beams adds an ethereal dimension.
Alimi repurposes long held tenets of European, Modern and Indigenous art into new visions of African figuration. Drawing upon his courage series, in this new body of work he proposes alternative ways of channeling all peoples into one mind; towards new signifiers of understanding. Rather than what separates us as individuals, he emphasizes our commonwealth as keepers of the human race tasked with unifying a deeply divided world, further fractured by religious differences, income and gender inequalities. Alimi’s latest solo exhibition at Retro Africa is a timely intervention for our troubled contemporary times, as well as a bold new progression in his commanding oeuvre.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog of the artwork, with scholarly essays and creative writing from notable contributors.
Born on the 8th of May, 1974 in Lagos, Nigeria. Alimi Adewale studied mechanical engineering in Ilorin, Nigeria. He developed an extensive knowledge of art after graduating by attending various art workshops across the world. A painter and sculptor his work explores various aspects of urbanization, and the condition of everyday man within the context of this phenomenon. In richly textured “sculptural” portraits and landscapes, often rendered in oil on canvas or in mixed media involving photography and acrylic paint, he combines elements of minimalism and abstraction to evoke the movement, tensions and intensity inherent in the cosmopolitan environment.
Gallery Admission: Free
Opening times: Monday – Sunday, 10am – 9pm
Retro Africa Gallery, 12 Ukpabi Asika St, Asokoro, Abuja, Nigeria.
t: +234 814 356 6926, +234 906 411 0262 | e: info@retro-africa.com | w: retroafrica.art
