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GALLERIES: Infinite capacity for taking pains

Friday December 02 2016
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Hanging Thoughts, by Peter Kenyanya; and Dividing Lines, by Dickens Otieno. PHOTOS | FRANK WHALLEY

If genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains, then three more Kenyan artists are heading in the right direction.

They have joined the select band whose work delights as much for its attention to detail as for its style and panache.

Of course, immaculate finishing should be taken for granted — the professional minimum we have a right to expect — but a history of slapdash opportunism coupled with an unnervingly high sense of entitlement among some artists has made it something special.

Our painstaking trio is Dickens Otieno, Peter Kenyanya and Mwini Mutuku, whose sculptures can be seen at a winning exhibition in Nairobi. None is yet among the stars in the East African firmament, but I think this show could change all that.

Called Third Dimension and sub-titled Form/Shape/Space, it is on at the Circle gallery on James Gichuru Road until December 23, and presents 35 works by 20 artists; many household names plus a few to surprise us.

Otieno has produced a shimmering curtain of hand woven alloy strips, a plea for racial tolerance and mutual respect; Kenyanya has created three imaginative pieces of strength and beauty; and Mwini’s series of figurative panels excite the eye with a rhythmic 3-D dance.

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It took Otieno more than three months to cut three 50kg sack loads of drink cans into strips each just 5mm wide, which he then wove into a sheet of coloured stripes and mounted them on a fine wire mesh bent into a contour map.

Called Dividing Lines, it is reminiscent of the iridescent curtains of El Anatsui, the internationally applauded Ghanaian whose sewn sheets of found objects like bottle tops become metaphors for the threat waste poses to our environment.

Dividing Lines was Otieno’s reaction to the wave of killings in the United States that led to Black Lives Matter. Each stripe represents a different homestead, village, tribe or country, while the close weave suggests that beneath these differences we are all human. The contour map is of a world we all share.

The idea is enlightened, its realisation accessible and the execution superb — a wholly satisfying piece of art.

Fans of Kenyanya will enjoy his soapstone sculpture Honeymoon Couple, but those new to his work should turn instead to the tautly carved marble figure of a woman holding a baby, called Sitting Pretty, cut to sit snugly on the edge of a plinth (or shelf or table top) with the legs hanging over. It thus unifies space while its clean, cool planes invite a caress.

Behind it lies his exposition of Women’s Rights are Human Rights, a black granite carving of a figure in a foetal crouch, but it is outside in the garden that we find Kenyanya’s magnificent Hanging Thoughts, a pierced granite figure like a shaved cone emerging from a cube, suspended from a steel bar resting on two wooden plinths.

The figure, with its three Cubist masses, represents our hidden desires, and was inspired by the undercurrents of emotion reluctantly expressed by some of Kenyanya’s fellow carvers. They had previously concealed their opinions… left them hanging.

Again, the execution is superb; the stippled surface of one side of the central cube contrasting dramatically with the lower, tapering planes. It took Kenyanya three months to chisel out the granite; time demonstrably layered into this monumental sculpture.

Mwini presents Gender Series, four suspended towers each of eight panels bearing repeating designs of female figures underpinned by a triangular composition. They are a visual diary of Mwini’s study of gender fluidity and the stigma and repression that often attend homosexuality and transgender issues. In the lexicon of LGBT a triangle pointing upwards is male; one pointing down is female.

The outlines of the figures were burnt into the panels by a laser machine, guaranteeing precision and ensuring these pieces are as immaculate as all this artist’s work.

Elsewhere, an abundance of other well finished pieces with something for everyone — and with Christmas round the corner, why not?

There are two stoneware figures and a terracotta by the much loved Edward Njenga, a crazy character by George Lilanga, welded steel sculptures by Dennis Muraguri, a brilliantly realised bull terrier by Metasebia Simatchena, a couple of C-Stunners from Cyrus Kabiru, a figurative carving by Gakunju Kaigwa, and a selection of large garden ornaments by Bertiers.

Then there are Adam and Eve, two lifesize wood carvings by Anthony Wanjau, fecund in their rounded volumes. According to the Christian canon, these are the progenitors of us all. And they look quite capable of it.

Notable too are a first essay into sculpture by Onyis Martin, a woman fashioned from binding wire, and Gor Soudan’s mighty Crucifixion, oddly entitled Resurrection, this time with the wire torso fastened onto the wall between the arms of the Cross and not, as previously exhibited, held forward so only its shadow falls into that space.

This is a hugely satisfying show that amply demonstrates the value of taking infinite pains in realising the subject as well as in its finishing.

For an artist to offer less is to undermine his or her credibility as well as to insult the viewer.

Professionalism must hold sway.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, an arts consultancy based in Nairobi.

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