Odyssey: A retrospective of Olaku’s drawings, paintings at national museum

When art connoisseurs, collectors and other visual art enthusiasts converge for what has been described as the most-awaited solo art exhibition, in Lagos, some rare and special masterpieces will define the event. The exhibiting artist, Abiodun Olaku, will be showing, among other pieces, some 15 exclusive paintings and drawings, aimed at boosting the critical values of his art.

The exhibition titled, Odyssey: A Retrospective of Olaku’s Drawings and Paintings, being organised by Red Heritage, opens on October 19, ending November 3, 2024 at National Museum Onikan Lagos. Red Heritage assured followers of Olaku and the general public art enthusiasts that the artist’s solo exhibition will not just be about aesthetics, but also bringing great value for investment in art appreciation.

As one of the most collected artists from Africa, Olaku will be using the exhibition to broaden his scope of naturalism art, especially as regards documentation of the environment in visual culture. For his current solo exhibition, a pseudo-auction is expected to be among the highlights of the event, Red Heritage stated.

“Out of the 15 exclusive and special works for the exhibition, four of them go into a auction-like sales,” Red Heritage explained. The promoters disclosed that the presentation of the exclusive pieces “would open a new phase” in appreciating Olaku’s works.

Among such rare and special limited number of paintings featuring in the exhibition is ‘Steps & Colours’ (oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches, dated 2022, depicting the thin line between a mascot and masquerade, emiting colours that sync with the elated mood of the character behind the costume. Still on the excitement that the costumed characters generates, two other paintings, also oil on canvas titled Divine Elegance (44 x 30 inches, dated 2023), and The Mastery of Being – Mmau Series (48 x 36 inches, 2021 – 2023) strengthen Olaku’s visual capturing skills when it comes to masquerades.

Perhaps, an artist of Olaku’s status, whose work emits much, deserves a curator with sharp critical view, making Prof Jerry Buhari a perfect choice for the creative management of the show. “The concept of story-telling defines our approach to the ‘Odyssey’ project,” Buhari stated. “We are all stories in our rights and in our ways. In essence, therefore, Abiodun Olaku is a story (The story) of a personality, the story of an artist and the story of his works, told in a harmonious composition.”

On the contents of the exhibition, Buhari recalled how the preparation for the show was based on the current of Olaku’s works. The curator noted that the approach exposed quite some revelation about the artist’s hidden works. “We looked at the current of his creative works and saw interesting portrait studies of different personalities – famous and obscure, lonely, serene, rural and urban landscapes; some opened by roads with little or no human presence, reminding one of Ben Okri’s ‘The Famished Road’?” Noting that roads in Olaku’s landscapes art are definitive of journeys into and out of, based on how individuals see them, Buhari said “Roads also invite the viewer to share in his journeys.” He added that Olaku takes his audience “through four Odysseys of portraits of personalities most of them with facial expressions suggestive of age, wisdom and experience.”

Ahead of the opening, quite some collectors and patrons have been taking critical views of the artist and his pedigree of mastery in visual rendition of exceptional textures. For example, a collector captured Olaku’s depth of commitment in producing timeless and resplendent pieces that glorify nature, despite man’s shortcomings. “‘Intensity’ is perhaps the word that comes to mind when observing Abiodun Olaku’s art— the intensity of the artist and his creations,” Olufolake Agbowu stated.

“In his paintings, Olaku evokes such a powerful experience that one connects with his scenes on a deeply visceral level, both visually and emotionally. The atmosphere of the place, the dust in the air, the texture of the skin, the character of the walkways — everything is so vividly rendered that one can almost see and breathe the scene.”

From his Artist Statement, Olaku reviewed over four decades of his studio practice. “With 43 years of certified experience under my belt, I can authoritatively observe that since I joined, the art scene, (both at home and abroad), has experienced a monumental transformation at every level and space of active stakeholdership, from the preparatory grounds, i.e.: the schools, through the brokerage of dealers, galleries, curators and critics to the individual and corporate consumers and aficionados,” Olaku wrote in the statement titled ‘I Am Work-in-Progress’. “The average temperament is now acutely ‘contemporary’, with enough intellectual rationalisation, postulation and justification to set aside all that had hitherto been logical, reasonable, and rational, in the name of this chaotic new-age movement known as ‘Contemporary Art’.”

Boosting the artist’s mastery of representational forms, particularly in streetscaps and other naturalism paintings are oil on canvas pieces such as Passage of Hope Series, 30 x 24 inches, dated 2023; Advance Party (The Prospectors series), 23.5 x 30 inches, 2023; and Whispers II (Sogunro series), 30 x 36 inches, 2022-2023, among others on the list of 15 exclusive works.