NEW YORK, NY.- Gagosian announced the representation of Jadé Fadojutimi. To inaugurate the relationship, Fadojutimi will take over the gallery’s booth at Frieze London in October 2022 with an installation of new works.
In her paintings, which are often monumental in scale, Fadojutimi orchestrates color, space, line, and movement in the service of fluid emotion and the quest for self-knowledge. She interprets everyday experience in ways that are at once compelling and confrontational, reflecting a drive to understand more completely otherwise indescribable but perpetually intertwined ideas of identity and beauty. “Human. Animal. Natural. We all have souls; objects too,” she states. “We are all beauty, and that is what is encapsulated by the word life.”
Making use of key visual elements from twentieth-century painting such as grids, layers, and the juxtaposition of disparate types of mark, Fadojutimi conjures a sense of transformation. Her compositions can suggest plants or microbes, marine landscapes or stained-glass windows, but edge consistently toward abstraction. Described by the artist as “environments,” these complex arrangements are built up with layers of oil paint, sometimes interrupted by oil pastel. Fadojutimi also combines elements of clothing—swatches of fabric and the shapes of stockings and bows—with ambiguous outlines to reflect the trauma of displacement (she alludes to a “familiar unfamiliarity” born of motion toward and away from recognizability).
In other works, Fadojutimi draws inspiration from specific locations, cultures, objects, and sounds, especially Japanese anime, clothing, and soundtracks (she traveled to Japan after graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, then again for a residency in 2016, and now returns to the country several times a year). Writing, too, is key to her process—sometimes she uses it to help articulate the subtleties of her painting; at other times she positions it in parallel to the visual by adopting a more poetic approach. For Fadojutimi, her roles as artist and writer are equally important aspects of her creative practice.
Fadojutimi will have a solo exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, England, opening September 16, 2022. Her work is also currently featured in The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecelia Alemani at the 59th Biennale di Venezia.
Jadé Fadojutimi was born in 1993 in London, where she lives and works. Collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Baltimore Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Tate, London; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, among others. Solo exhibitions include The Numbing Vibrancy of Characters in Play, Peer, London (2019); and Yet, Another Pathetic Fallacy, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2021). Select group exhibitions include Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021); Present Generations, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio (2021–22); The Stomach and the Port, Liverpool Biennial, England (2021); and Walk Through British Art, Tate Britain, London (2021). Awards include the Hine Painting Prize (2017).
Fadojutimi will continue to be represented by Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany, and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo.
