Gallery 1957
Homecoming: The Aesthetic of the Cool
Gallery 1957 celebrates their fifth anniversary
with a group show of new works by three leading Ghanaian painters:
Amoako Boafo (b.1984), Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe (b.1988)
and Kwesi Botchway (b.1994)
Exhibition: 25 March – 09 May 2021
Gallery II, Kempinski Galleria, Accra, Ghana
Gallery 1957 I & II
Galleria Mall, Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City
Gamel Abdul Nasser Avenue, Ridge Accra, Ghana
Gallery 1957 celebrates their fifth anniversary with a group show of new works by three leading Ghanaian painters: Amoako Boafo (b.1984), Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe (b.1988) and Kwesi Botchway (b.1994), on view at Gallery II, Accra. Homecoming: The Aesthetic of the Cool marks the first presentation to showcase all three artists together in their country of birth.In Homecoming, the three painters explore what it means to be Black, African, and a contemporary artist in the 21st century. All born and raised in Ghana and educated at the prestigious Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra, Boafo, Quaicoe and Botchway’s works have collectively re-defined contemporary ideologies of blackness and West African culture – whilst documenting the universal experience of simply being human.
The past two decades, prompted by globalization and stimulated by the growth of the internet and social media, have witnessed a movement of connection between Africa and its Diaspora. Unifying concepts of Blackness and filling in fissures brought about by centuries of enslavement and colonization, the movement has explored the effects of geographical, linguistic, cultural, and familial separations. A singular and significant element of Amoako, Quaicoe and Botchway’s practice is their relationship to this global Black identity. Each artist depends on chromatic expressions deployed through the abstraction of color. Bold and saturated hues of blue, ochre, purple and grey, in turn, represent the vastness of the Black identity through multivalent, non-monolithic modalities. This conceptual marker does not erase or suppress the African, Ghanaian, or specific ethnic identity that they represent, rather it positions African subjects within the contemporary visual plane, stripping them of fetishized otherness, stereotyping and exotification, all while connecting the subjects of their images to Black people around the world.
Boafo’s formal and technical alignment with traditional portraiture, and artistic dialogue with early 20th century European Expressionism and Modernism, merges seamlessly with West African abstraction found in traditional textile, sculpture and palettes, and the canon of 20th century portraiture notably created by West African descendants of the United States and Caribbean.
Quaicoe uses a gradient gray and taupe scale that visually flattens the richness of brown tones indicative of Black skin, evoking the nostalgia of vintage film and photography, and surreal dreamscapes. Quaicoe’s palette creates a cinematic feeling within the narratives of everyday people, elevating quotidian life to the monumentality of historical documentation.Similarly, Botchway’s color palette sumptuously invites a subtle interaction with the subject, by using an intricate pattern composed in a deep purple scale, chromatically highlighted by bright contrasting orange hue, that situates the figure into realms of mythic otherworldliness.Individually and collectively, Boafo, Botchway, and Quaicoe’s images resist pejorative notions that desire African people to remain frozen in time, set apart, culturally and economically stagnant, and reserved for the western world’s subjugation.
Gallery 1957 I & II
Galleria Mall, Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City
Gamel Abdul Nasser Avenue, Ridge Accra, Ghana
EstherArtNewsLetter 