The amalgamation of Jesus and Superman in Demola Ogunajo’s Area Art (2018)
(should Area Art be italicized or put in quotes? And I wouldn’t put his name in
bold) is a style of portraiture that recalls the Christ Pontokrator, a church
decoration with Greco-Roman origins that is said to trace back to statues of Zeus.
What was at first imperial imagery of a Greek deity has been proliferated for
centuries as the orthodox imagery of the Christian deity. In Ogunajo’s Area Art
(2018), this deity has been replaced by a well-muscled, androgynous figure in a
Superman costume. The all powerful sun — the source of light and life to the
earth and our known galaxy — is called upon as a distinction of sanctity. The face
of the central figure is bathed in this sunlight, a cadmium yellow which
selectively casts down on the figure’s matted hair, on the edges of the face, along
the joint where the neck meets the top of the shoulder and on the patches of skin
around the collar bone. Curiously, this cadmium yellow light continues into the
folds of the figure’s cape, rather than over the red-coloured extension (clarify:
describe what kind of extension) on the figure’s costume. On account of its
circular shape and bright colour, the sun on the figure’s head is centralised in the
spatial configuration in Area Art (you italicize it here but not elsewhere–be
consistent).
There is a symmetrical line that cuts across the middle of Area Art from the TV
set on the topmost end, through the index finger in the middle of the painting
and down the lion’s) head at the bottom-end.(although this is nicely
descriptive, it would really help me to see the image) The heart-bulb (what
does this mean?) is a wash of yellow and red which gives it the vitality of a
beating organ. Yellow spikes of light of varying length jut out of every side of theheart and right on top is a flame. Pointing directly at the middle of the heart-bulb
is the index finger on the figure’s right hand. It is a simple and effective way to
direct the eye of the viewer to what is most significant in Area Art — the symbol
of the immaculate heart.
If in biology the heart is a central circulatory system of the body, this function is
suggested in Area Art whose circular constellation of images is disparate and
exoticised. They look like reconstitutions of a fabled kingdom whose host of
characters include winged lions, arrow-tongued dragons, growling tigers, birds of
varicoloured plumage, cherubic clowns and hovering angels. The part of the
figure’s face which is not brightened in cadmium yellow is awash in blush-pink
which resembles pale taupe, depending on the quality of light to which the
painting is exposed. For this reason, easy assignations of race and colour to the
figure fail. The ambiguity is intentional and brilliantly so. The figure’s eyelashes
are depicted as a scalene triangle perhaps, based on its three near-equal (or
“unequal” as scalene sides are quite different) sizes.
On one end of the triangle which is closest to the forehead is a straight, vertical
line which progresses down the figure’s face and in between the eyes, stopping
just below the middle of the face. This vertical line runs parallel to the lines on
both sides of the figure’s face which form the outer frame of his head. The hair
on the figure’s head is permed and pressed down into a dome-shape. The oval
curvature of this dome smoothly transitions, on both sides of the figure’s head,
into vertical lines which form three parallel lines with the middle line, and is
used to designate what would otherwise be the ridges of a nose. These three
vertical lines recall the “three parallel lines theorem” in geometry which is used
to define equal proportions introduced by transversal lines. While no transversal
lines (whether of light or colour) cut across the figure’s face, the physicalemergence of the trio draws easy allusions to the centrality of geometry in Area
Art.
Area Art, the eponymous title of Ogunajo’s debut exhibition at kó gallery, is
defined by the playful adoption of mass signage from contemporary advertising,
comic books and consumerist obsessions as a break from traditional art values,
such as historical painting in favour of the mundanity of popular culture. The
word “area” in Nigerian street parlance is used to describe working class
communities and the term “Area Art” refers to the mass artistic production that
emerges in public spaces (shops, buses, billboards etc). Ogunajo is well versed in
the inventive adoption of area art through technical, formal and abstract
modalities. He deploys in his paintings the visual vocabulary (maxims, caricature,
garish colours, religious iconography etc) of such populist images and objects into
new forms of knowledge production.