October Gallery will participate in the 2022 edition of AKAA Art Fair with a presentation spanning sculpture, works on paper, photographs and paintings by artists,
Nnenna Okore,
Alexis Peskine,
Benji Reid, and
Frantz Lamothe.
Highlights include a new dynamic installation in the Carreau du Temple by
Nnenna Okore, who will also be in Paris to present a talk at the fair on 21st October, with Claire Staebler, Director of FRAC Pays de la Loire (Nantes) as the moderator. Especially made for the fair, Okore’s large-scale installation includes materials such as plastic bags, yarn and sticks, dexterously interwoven in undulating forms. At the Gallery booth, Okore will be represented by
Ethereal Beauty, an intricate work, that reveals an extraordinary manifestation of colour and formation, resembling organic elements in nature. For the Bruges Triennial 2021, Nnenna Okore completed a monumental textile installation, And the World Keeps Turning, in which she stretched PVC fabric around the Poertoren (Gunpowder Tower) in Bruges.
Another highlight is
Bwira (Getting Dark), a striking work by
Alexis Peskine, made from Moon gold leaf, nails, coffee, and earth. Peskine’s practice addresses questions of the Black Experience and references the Congolese wooden effigies, the Minkisi power figures. Nails, in both ancient and contemporary African cultures, are associated with objects of immense symbolic and spiritual power. The artist is also represented by two remarkable portraits created from coffee infused by ink, screen printed onto handmade paper, surrounded by gold leaf.
On view will be several fantastical photographs by
Benji Reid, whose works are primarily composed of self-portraits in eye-catching anti-gravitational poses. Reid seduces the viewer by creating alternative realms of hyper-reality, adorned with a medley of marvelous objects, set against imaginary surroundings. Choreography and photography unite in Benji Reid’s evocative images and his works have been shown in MoCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts), New York, as part of the 2019 exhibition
Styles of Resistance: From the Corner to the Catwalk.
Also presented is
Lonely Child, a poignant painting by Frantz Lamothe, whose raw and visceral works reflect fragments of his varied past. Born in Haiti in 1961, Lamothe departed the country at the age of four to spend his childhood in Brooklyn; by the age of sixteen he was living on the streets and painting graffiti in the subways of New York. This way of life came to an end when, along with fellow graffiti artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lamothe was taken up by the New York gallery circuit. Lamothe’s work has garnered international acclaim across Europe, Japan, and the USA. He lives and works in Paris, France.