Jadé Fadojutimi will be represented by Gagosian. In order to kick off the collaboration, Fadojutimi will install new works in the gallery’s stand at Frieze London in October 2022.
Fadojutimi manipulates color, space, line, and movement in her paintings, which are frequently monumental in scale, in order to express fluid emotion and the pursuit of self-knowledge. She analyzes commonplace events in ways that are both captivating and challenging, showing a need to comprehend identity and beauty concepts that are continually entangled and otherwise incomparable. “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.”
Fadojutimi creates an impression of transition by utilizing crucial aspects of twentieth-century painting, such as grids, layers, and the combination of various mark kinds. Her works occasionally veer toward abstraction but can also evoke microscopic organisms, aquatic environments, or stained-glass windows. These intricate patterns, which the artist refers to as “environments,” are constructed using several coats of oil paint, occasionally broken up by oil pastel. In order to depict the trauma of dislocation, Fadojutimi also blends components of clothing—such as swatches of fabric and the shapes of stockings and bows—with hazy contours (she alludes to a “familiar unfamiliarity” born of motion toward and away from recognizability).
Other works by Fadojutimi are inspired by certain places, cultures, things, and sounds, particularly Japanese anime, fashion, 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 is important to her work as well; sometimes she utilizes it to describe her paintings’ complexities; other times, she sets it parallel to the visual by taking a more poetic tack. Both of Fadojutimi’s careers—as an artist and a writer—are significant facets of her creative process.
The Hepworth Wakefield in England will host a solo exhibition by Fadojutimi beginning on September 16, 2022. In addition, her art is now on display in Cecelia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams exhibition at the 59th Venice Biennale.
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.
