A Life Of Its Own: Ayotunde Ojo

Tiwani Contemporary, Lagos is pleased to present Ayotunde Ojo: A Life Of Its Own which references Ojo's painting process and understanding of how each painting arrives into being.

 

The artist states:

“The result is a painting that resists stillness. These works do not document a moment; they register duration. The room is not fixed. It adjusts, shifts, absorbs emotional residue. Figures appear anchored yet slightly unsettled, as though existing across more than one temporal plane. What is seen is both present and remembered.”

 

Ojo presents his domestic interiors as living, shifting spaces, altered by light, stillness and movement, subtly capturing the temporal shifts that coexist within a shared space. The paintings feel almost cinematic; compressing a series of lived experiences within the same space at different points of time, reminding us that time is never suspended but can be read as layered, infinite, visual information. The walls shift, light contradicts itself, perspectives fracture and sometimes settle momentarily on subjects and objects.

 

Retaining the underdrawings, Ojo references the compositional decisions that remain embedded beneath the surface, of which the canvas becomes a site of accumulation, the charcoal remains visible as a form of structural memory, and the oil and acrylic paint accumulate over these traces, sometimes clarifying, sometimes obscuring.

 

The exhibition reflects an awareness that life does not stand still. Relationships between lovers, friends, family and animals carry moments of closeness and potential friction. By layering multiple scenes together, Ojo introduces a quiet tension into the compositions. The home, once perceived primarily as a site of stability, becomes a space that both shelters and mirrors the instabilities of the outside world.