Uche Uzorka: Lign. Sign. Symbol

African Artists' Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria

January 31 - February 23, 2013

 

 

As curator for Uche Uzorka: Line.Sign.Symbol, I organized an exhibition of the Nigerian artist's recent works on paper on behalf of the African Artists' Foundation. 

 

Line.Sign.Symbol presents the second solo exhibition of Nigerian artist Uche Uzorka. Uzorka’s artistic practice incorporates painting, collage, cutting and pasting, and drawing in an examination of the processes of urban street culture. In Uche Uzorka’s most recent works on paper, which include ink and charcoal drawings, sombre tones of black, grey, and red dominate the colour spectrum, boldly protruding from the white and barren remainder of the blank picture plane. At first glance, these works are best described as abstract drawings, with amorphous shapes and splashes of colour flowing together in an ambiguous and seemingly haphazard rhythm. Yet, at closer inspection, meticulous attention has been made to create a myriad of overlapping patterns, bodies, and signs, tightly congested together to form a dense combination of complex design. The drawings reflect the artist's interest in mapping urban culture, charting the city as a cartographer studies terrain. 

 

If at one sense Uzorka’s drawings seem to come across as arbitrarily doodled, there is also a strict and rigorous attention to detail that creates its structure and congeals its fluid power. In short, what makes Uche Uzorka’s drawings unique is their place between the figurative and the abstract. Rather than exist as binary oppositions, Uzorka frames the abstract in the figurative, and vice versa. Using strategies that Uzorka refers to as “contrast and dominance”, it is an exercise in how lines become form, ultimately stopping at the decisive moment that they do.​

 

About the Artist:

 

Uche Uzorka was born in 1974 in Delta State, Nigeria. Uzorka graduated in 2001 from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, majoring in painting. Uzorka’s practice incorporates painting, collage, cutting and pasting, charcoal, and ink drawing in an examination of processes of urban street culture. Uzorka won First Place in the National Art Competition in 2011 for his collaboration with artist Chike Obeagu. His first solo exhibition, Uche Uzorka: The Organic, was held in October 2012 at the Goethe-Institut Nigeria in association with the African Artists’ Foundation. Uzorka lives and works in Lagos.