Artist Statement

My work is primarily painting and material exploration of connections between themes in select contexts like sciences, architecture, art as a familiar practice, media and gaming. I use the constant bringing of these elements to navigate personal experiences, starting each piece at times with brand new approaches. I make use of acrylics, gels, and tapes. I intend to spark conversations of similar experiences that may be hinted at from piece to piece. At times political conclusions are drawn surrounding race, blackness, learning experiences as a Diaspora African from the vast use of material or image depiction. With the constant bridging of these elements, I call on viewers to connect dots and find common ground.

I approach my creative practices as more of a language of communicating experiences, how I can apply them and forming an ecosystem of varying forms of creative expression like car journalism, painting, engineering, architecture, gaming and so on. As my interests and experiences grow so do my avenues to explore.

Additionally there’s various combinations of approaches as if they were beakers in a lab, one might be formal intuitive experimentation, and one is familiarity with architecture, structure and systems. I get to mix them in infinite proportions to produce a variety of results.

Each painting becomes super charged with moments that made it come to be as well its influences and deeper study or analysis. I capture the experience of gaming, something that’s been vital in my upbringing as a child living in a dangerous part of Lagos city and not much opportunity to go outside and play asides in school. Then there’s incorporation of my favorite playmate till date, my baby brother via his xbox gamertag. Depicting camos or skins that scream mastery and expertise of both the practice of gaming and the making of visual art.

I set out to start discussions surrounding the work in a unique way, discussions of inclusion as a black man in an online gaming space and how hostile it can be towards me in an unpoliced or unchecked space, discussions of real life issues like gun violence and systematic racism, how a politician’s white family in the US can pose all armed to the teeth but imagery of me as a black man gaming with weapons that don’t exist can be seen as provocative to the same group.

I use acquired technical ability and experiences like my study in architecture to take a deeper dive into moments of the work and tell of my understanding of elements in the work and what makes them tick.

Making the work applicable in the design of racing helmets, gaming controllers and so on allows the technical side of the work more forms to exist as, could even be functional and essential to the day to day life of an individual.