This abstract artwork features a striking composition of geometric shapes and vivid colors. The dominant blue background is contrasted by the bold, angular black forms that intersect and overlap, creating a sense of depth and movement. At the center, a circular element displays a series of numbers and letters, adding a layer of numerical symbolism to the piece. The overall visual style appears to be influenced by modernist and cubist techniques, with the artist employing a reductive and geometric approach to the subject matter. This work likely reflects the artist's intention to explore themes of industrialization, technology, and urban landscapes through a bold and visually captivating abstract aesthetic. ...
Jebila Okongwu critiques stereotypes of Africa and African identity and repurposes them as counterstrategies, drawing on African history, symbolism, and spirituality. One of his preferred materials is banana boxes; their tropicalized graphics articulate an ‘exotic’ provenance, much like the exoticization of African bodies from an ethnocentric perspective. When these boxes are shipped to the West from Africa, the Caribbean and South America, old routes of slavery are retraced, accentuating existing patterns of migration, trade, and exploitation.
Okongwu often investigates methods to communicate what it feels like to be embedded in structures of domination such as colonialism, racism, and exploitation, and how to represent this aspect of blackness. His frequent use of imagery related to BDSM is not an attempt to allude to the histories of domination and oppression by analogy with these practices, where acts of submission are obviously voluntary, but as an instrument to examine roles of difference and the embodiment of certain types of sensations. The artist is questioning how difference becomes material within the contexts of race and power. By the layering of the exoticized and stereotyped corporate logos of multinational banana importers with imagery related to BDSM, he attempts to articulate the complex histories of physical experience on the body of the other, where domination and brutality have not only been profitable, but also eroticized.
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Founded in 2016, Baert Gallery maintains a distinct focus on bridging the historical legacies and artistic sensibilities of Europe and Los Angeles. Working with a roster of emerging artists, the gallery is committed to showcasing a diverse program of work that engages complex philosophical, critical, and political concepts while challenging settled and conventional aesthetic expectations. Located in Los Angeles’ Arts District, the gallery is dedicated to fostering and promoting the region’s unique art scene in a spirit of local cooperation and in dedication to mindful sensitivity towards its broader geographical and social milieu. ...
