JADÉ FADOJUTIMI

Gagosian is pleased to announce DWELVE: A Goosebump in Memory, Jadé Fadojutimi’s first solo exhibition in New York, at 522 West 21st Street. Featuring new paintings and works on paper, the project bears a title that combines the words dwell and delve, suggesting both domestic familiarity and sites that prompt further discovery.

In her large-scale acrylic and oil canvases, Fadojutimi uses color, space, and line to explore concepts of identity, emotion, and experience. Employing layers and gestural marks, she produces compositions that often suggest plants or landscapes, but which ultimately remain abstract. Each visual “environment” is constructed with strata of paint interrupted by lines of oil pastel and oil bar, the indeterminate contours of which suggest narratives of displacement. Fadojutimi also draws inspiration from animation, clothing, and music.

The paintings in DWELVE are distinguished by their vivid coloration and lush imagery; every inch of these expansive compositions is vital and active. The density of each arrangement also resonates with the notion of deep exploration contained within the exhibition’s title; the canvases are at once inviting and mysterious, key details often emerging from behind or between broader swathes of color and texture. In this they reflect visually an emotional realm that intersects with the everyday experience of struggle.

DWELVE represents the first time that Fadojutimi has incorporated the idea of a soundtrack into the space of an exhibition. Acknowledging the significant and evolving role that music plays in the production of her work, she invites viewers to consider the abstract nature of soundtracks (as opposed to “figurative” pieces) and the ways in which objects of personal importance might be discussed using the same terminology. Combining these ideas with the formal inspiration of textile design, Fadojutimi presents herself as at once a writer of scores, a composer of color, and a conductor of thought, and her paintings as both “visual essays” and extensions of bodily movement infused with texture and touch.