MIMESIS : Olamilekan Abatan, Alex Peter Idoko; Joseph Chimerie, Nebolisa Kelly, John Hopex

To imitate or to create, to match or to surpass nature, at the Mimesis exhibition five young artists, Olamilekan Abatan, Alex Peter Idoko, Joseph Chimerie; Nebolisa Kelly and John Hopex, from Nigeria depict reality truer than reality itself and pursue the concept of hyperrealism that has characterised contemporary Nigerian art in recent years.

 

It is difficult to distinguish between the real and the virtual, and what in the near past was a dystopian future foreshadowed only in science fiction is now becoming more and more clearly defined, and already in the metaverse it is possible to work on the senses to influence our perception of the real, and it is difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is virtual. 

 

Young Nigerian artists stand at the crossroads of representing reality and surpassing it, unwittingly constructing a new aesthetic which goes beyond mere representation, exceeding photographic realism and positioning themselves as creators of new characters in which even the 'resolution' surpasses and transcends the perfection of reality.  

To approach the paintings of Olamilekan Abatan or Nebolisa Kelly is to penetrate the flesh of the subject, it is to live a new experience, to plunge deep into a new reality, one that is real yet imaginary all at once.

 

Rudolf Arnheim asserted that human perception generates meaning from our experiences with the world around us, and all artistic expression is founded on this process of appropriation of reality just as we see it through our senses and understanding.

It is in this process in which art becomes the vehicle to give the observer's perception the possibility of interpreting his or her own universe rather than its exclusive representation, provoking in each one of us different stimuli and perceptions, which can change our idea and our perception. 

The Mimesis exhibition is an attempt to capture and portray not only the world that surrounds artists but all the thousands of images that reach their eyes through the web.

 

Through their hyperrealism, the Nigerian artists recreate an environment simulating physical reality within imaginary places. 

 

Master of Nigerian hyperrealism Olamilekan Abatan is certainly his operation of assimilation of classical Western aesthetics re-elaborated with a new contemporary language and africanised by waxes. In his works, the characters recall those of the great masters of the Renaissance, showing the saint or the madonna in a classical position, but modernising them through contemporary clothing. 

 

In his work "Deadly sin", the reference to Caravaggio is undeniable, but just like the great master who drew on the lesson of the 'greats', Abatan takes up again the setting of two masterpieces by the seventeenth-century master in a mix of "Medusa" and "Teenage Bacchus". , updating the setting by substituting the character's face with one of his self-portraits and inserting modern objects, a gold watch symbolising power and a smartphone symbolising our century.

His approach is not just a reinterpretation of the masterpieces of classical culture, but a mise-en-scene of new realities.

 

Alex Peter Idoko's work might be likened to a magical ritual where the artist, through the ceremony of fire, creates astonishing images, but what makes his work even more stupefying is his ability to use a pyrograph, creating figures with hyper-realistic precision. 

Peter Idoko's work strikes for the capacity that burnt matter gains in his work in “Strive", the subject and the technique become intertwined, the character in the foreground is blowing towards the fire, the framing from below enhances the content, the heat of the fire seems to come out of the picture we feel invaded by the heat of the flames, it diverts our attention, only the character with his head resting on the blower's shoulder, what is his role in the story? It is then that the image in a whirlwind of ideas begins to take shape, catapulted towards new expectations, the artist is not just representing an act, but is telling a feeling, a sensation. 

Idoko feels that through fire, he can master the matter of his table, through fire he can purify, subtilize and reach the highest level, to the light that is universal essence and the most immaterial of images.

Joseph Chimerie uses colour with such impalpable and soft shades as though it were make-up on a model's face. His work is what one might call fashionable, not in the sense of fashion, but of elegance. His figures are wrapped in a perspective depth as if inside a magic box and could be picked up and moved. The plasticity of the forms is realistic and the characters that represent the scene are delicate, refined and move as if on a catwalk. It is a depiction of a muffled reality featuring characters of attractive beauty of faces and bodies, in subtle colour harmonies, in a physical space also pervaded by a light and sinuous elegance, even the water of the pool, rippling in the breeze acquires through the schematisation of the waves an intense and harmonious musical rhythm.

 

Nebolisa Kelly is the Nigerian hyperrealist artist per excellence, both for her subjects and her technique, all the elements are there - the magnum-size portraits, the water invading the face, the use of dense light and dark filled with details.

 

Nebolisa's work may be viewed on three different planes in terms of both physical space and content. At a distance, the work appears to have an almost palpable photographic realism, the subject appears almost to emerge from the painting and takes on form and matter; at a closer view, the surface is striking, the subject flattens out and the observer becomes very small and is able to enter the epidermis of the skin, feeling the hollowness of the pores and the freshness of the water trickling over the face, the roughness of the fabric of the clothes, all is represented with such realism and such objectivity that it no longer depends on the acuity of the eye, but on a maniacal quest to go beyond reality itself.

It is this quest for perfection that makes us reach the third level of vision, no longer the visual one, but the conceptual one. From the willingness to see and represent things as they are, the artist tells us about the increasingly frantic search for the most minute and imperceptible detail, to achieve perfection and to succeed in breaking out of the anonymity in which the artist feels caged.

 

Watching a portrait by John Hopex is like stopping time, his works are suspended in an indefinite epoch, a universal beauty and perfection that he displays by representing every single detail with maniacal precision, capturing light and shadows as if they were living matter.

His subject in 'Butterfly' is set against a white, neutral background, the figure's volume is defined by the precise line of the shoulders and head, the minutely carved details of the headgear and necklace are caught in the vibrant light that casts a volume of shadows on the body. It is the coloured butterflies that estrange the observer and catapult the subject into a space somewhere between the bucolic and the surreal. It is the coloured alienating element that is even more evident in the piece 'Apple' - where the apples suspended in space transform the work from hyper-realist to surrealist, catapulting us into a suspended, imaginary reality.