Wetin Be Dis?

Osi Audu © Osi Audu

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Osi Audu (b. 1956)

Based in New York, USA

Instagram: @osiaudu

www.osiaudu.com

Artist Profile

Wetin Be Dis? shows a series of abstract acrylic paintings and paper and graphite drawings stretched on canvas by Osi Audu whose work explores the tangible and intangible nature of "the self" and self-consciousness. The exhibition will run from 19 September to 26 October with a forthcoming catalogue that includes an essay by Professor Jack Mack FBA, an interview with the artist and photographs of all the works in the exhibition.

Audu's practice over the last three decades has elevated abstract art through his geometric acrylic paintings in primary colours and monochromatic grey and black drawings. Audu interrogates the duality of form/void and the tangible/intangible as they relate to the self and self-consciousness. Following the Yoruba concept of Ori Inu ("the inner head"), Audu's works - many of them displayed as "self-portraits" - draw attention to the artist's focus on the head as a signifier of consciousness and as an object of self-knowing.

Wetin Be Dis? is Nigerian Pidgin English for "What is this?" and in the exhibition Audu develops a series of abstract geometric paintings and drawings to raise questions about the dual and oft-time multifaceted nature of "the self." Referencing both philosophy and neurology, he tugs at our understandings and perceptions of "self-identity." The paintings are brightly coloured and often shaped with an opening breaking the center of the solid forms with the black-and-white drawings depicting similar geometric shapes but also more experimental variations including curvature and smaller repeating forms creating impressions of a starry night sky.

Audu received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Georgia in Athens (USA) in 1984 and a postgraduate-certificate in education from the University of Kent in Canterbury (UK) in 1994. Audu's work has shown in several prestigious institutions such as Iwalewa-Haus, Bayreuth (1995), the British Museum, London (2003), the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. (2006) and the Museo Di Palazzo Grimani during the Venice Biennale (2015). He lives and works in New York.