ART CITIES:London-Affinities
Featuring sculptural works by Jasmine Thomas-Girvan alongside paintings by Chris Ofili, the exhibition “Affinities” brings to light the rich artistic conversation that exists between these two artists, arising both in response to their shared environment as well as an ongoing dialogue throughout the nearly two decades they have known each other. This will be the first in a series of exhibitions in which gallery artists invite artists whose work they are inspired by to participate in a collaborative presentation.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive
Drawing alternately from Caribbean history, myth, ritual, literature, and her own experience, Thomas-Girvan’s poetically inflected works are grounded in the specificity of the Caribbean landscape and the region’s colonial past, but open out onto universal themes, most prominently, transformation and the construction of identity. Her sculptures and installations seamlessly weave together traditional supports, such as wood and bronze, with both found everyday objects and materials sourced from the natural environment, including shells, pieces of coral, palm fronds, and mangrove hairs, culled from a vast collection that she has amassed over time. The resulting assemblages, which cohere into singular visual statements, are at once familiar and fantastical, both venerating and working through a rich and complicated past. As Ofili notes: “Jasmine’s work tells beautiful and mysterious tales that are a combination of fragility and dread with a knowing nod towards alchemy and witchcraft of the past, present, and future”. On view are several large and small-scale canvases by Ofili from a 2019 body of work devoted to the figures of Calypso and Odysseus from Homer’s Odyssey. Inspired in part by the music of Trinidad, where Ofili has lived since 2005, the artist has reimagined Calypso, that traditionally is represented as a deceptive femme fatale, as a striking mermaid, and he has visualised Odysseus as a beautiful, dark-skinned suitor. In the paintings, Ofili presents the characters with curving bodies, sumptuously spread out across the compositions and displayed in layered surfaces filled with arabesque vines and bubble-like forms. Known for his intricate, kaleidoscopic paintings and works on paper that deftly merge abstraction and figuration, Ofili’s recent works evoke the lush landscapes and local traditions of Trinidad. Jasmine Thomas-Girvan was born in the parish of St Andrew in Jamaica in 1961. Her formative years were spent in an environment that nurtured her relationship with the nature. The tree filled ‘wonderland’ hidden behind the walls of her parent’s Molynes Road home, belied its urban location and helped to further fuel the fascination with flora and fauna and dualities of meaning evidenced in her work. During that time, she also developed an affinity for found objects (both man-made and natural) which, when incorporated in to her sculptures, function as artefacts, repositories and ciphers for the unique histories of the Americas. A sculptor, trained in jewellery and textile design, Jasmine received her BFA from the Parsons School of Design and has more recently explored paper making and glass blowing techniques. Her work has evolved during her career from more intimately sized, often wearable objects, to large scale installations with multimedia elements. Born in 1968 in Manchester, England, Chris Ofili creates intricate, kaleidoscopic paintings and works on paper that deftly merge abstraction and figuration. Ofili rose to prominence in the 1990s for his complex and playful multi-layered paintings, which he bedecked with a signature blend of resin, glitter, collage, and, often, elephant dung. His recent works (vibrant, symbolic, and frequently mysterious) draw upon the lush landscapes and local traditions of the island of Trinidad, where he has lived since 2005. Employing a diverse range of aesthetic and cultural sources, including, among others, Zimbabwean cave paintings, blaxploitation films, Italian soccer player Mario Balotelli, and modernist painting, Ofili’s work investigates the intersection of desire, identity, and representation.
Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 24 Grafton Street, London, Duration: 30/8-21/9/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.davidzwirner.com
