Tête-À-Tête, a duo exhibition featuring the works of emerging Nigerian contemporary painters Cherry Aribisala (UK) and David Olatoye (Nigeria), which opened on May 25 at Pi Artworks London continues until June 10.
Co-curated by Kayode Adegbola and Jade Turanli, Art plugged reports that the exhibition triggers a dialogue between two artists whose practices transcend the realm of portraiture and point towards the future of contemporary African art. Coinciding with London Gallery Weekend, this show aims to champion the distinct pictorial style and influences of these two emerging artists.
Cherry Aribisala draws inspiration from comic books and the Pop Art Movement of the 1960s to create figurative portraits of Black subjects surrounded by recurring floral motifs. Her new series of paintings interweaves escapism, world-building, and visual storytelling while rejecting artistic limitations on media or form. David Olatoye, on the other hand, is best known for his meticulously executed stylised portraits that merge figuration and interior design.
His works blend idealism and accentuates intimate moments with a focus on familial relationships, everyday life activities, and daydreaming. His new body of work can be interpreted as an ode to self—interrogating the uncertainty of life while honouring self-care. He illustrates a personal visual journey through oblique perspectives and experiments with pictorial space to conceal our surface understanding of what we are seeing.
Tête-à-Tête demonstrates the power of creativity as an emotional outlet and acts as a call to find new ways to activate self-liberation despite the confines and growing precarity of contemporary life.
Pi Artworks is located at 55 Eastcastle Street, London, W1W 8EG, United Kingdom.
