Onosowobo, Oshundaro enter Affinity Gallery space with Coalesce

Two contemporary artists, Damilola Onosowobo Marcus and Daniel Pengrapher Oshundaro, are showing their new works at the Affinity Art Gallery, Lagos. Themed Coalesce, the joint show, which opened March 14, ends April 17, 2021.

According to the organisers, the show “mirrors the transience of time and is a meditation on drawing out the strains between isolation and contact.”

The artists explore themes around Solitude, Waiting, Isolation, Rest and taking into consideration what was, what is and what is to be.

Of late, conversations about time have dominated discussions within communities, and these conversations border on the familiar and unfamiliar things. Coalesce inspires dialogues on the concepts of isolation, contact and considers the emotional and physical effects this has on us.

“Created during this period of unprecedented uncertainty and vulnerability, this selection of works reveals both artists’ ability to draw from a nexus of ideas to produce a distinctive and experiential body of works,” the organisers said.

Onosowobo’s work is described as uncovering questions bordering on perceptions of reality and lived experiences.

“Through the subtle use of tropes, composition, colours, light and subject, she pulls together her artistic configurations and re-conceptualises them within a modern cultural setting. Her works intend to initiate discourse that asks the question, ‘What memories are triggered by isolation?’ She looks to capture an obvious candidness in her subjects while permitting much room for translation and interpretation from the viewers.

While the figures in Daniel Pengrapher’s canvases are bound within abstract and textured flourishes of paint leaning towards the abstract expressionism movement. His latest body of work presents classical compositions of balanced polychromatic sequences that are imaginative and adorned with symbolism. Encountering the work of Pengrapher is a peculiar, unsettling experience as if the viewer has intruded into a space and a moment to which they are alien yet familiar,” the organisers said.