FEBRUARY 21, 2023. KATE MOTHES
“The Gaze” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. All images © Patrick Akpojotor
Akpojotor’s compositions play with perspective, contrast, and color to explore internal and external human experiences.
Combining a love for African masks and the people and buildings of his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, Patrick Akpojotor (previously) merges the figurative details of faces, shoulders, and arms with the geometric forms of hallways, doors, and staircases. “My surface becomes a playground where forms, colours, perspective, and space comes to play and interact,” he says in a statement. “The use of geometry and architectural elements highlight the influence of the built environment in shaping our memories, experiences, and identities in the world.”
Left: “Gaze to The Beautiful Sunlight (i)” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 195.5 x 152.5 centimeters. Right: “Terracotta wall” (2022), Autobase coated steel, 51 x2 3.5 x 19 centimeters
Akpojotor draws on the art historical legacies of Cubist painters who devised a way of breaking up the picture plane into “cubes” or fragments to show multiple sides of an object or figure at the same time. His compositions utilize skewed perspectives, contrast, and color to explore the dynamic relationship between internal and external human experiences, paralleling the interiors and exteriors of architectural spaces and the transformative ways we move between them. He has recently experimented with sculpture, producing steel forms of abstracted arches and steps.[…]
Left: “Meeting Point” (2022), Autobase coated steel, 40 x 46 x 25 centimeters. Right: “Step to The Infinite (iii)” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 centimeters
“Witness to the Times II” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91.5 centimeters
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