Why is it that some artists who flaunt their influences produce works of lasting quality while others seem merely to copy?

It is given to few to break new ground, and so it follows that most of the art we see is at best a new take on an old theme. Innovators are rare.

In East Africa, the one who moved me most was probably Gor Soudan, with his astonishing version of the Crucifixion — the shadow of a separately sculpted torso cast onto the cross where the body should be — while others included Otieno Kota and Peter Walala.

Kota stitched together tin sheets to echo the patchwork beauty of fields and the patterns of rooftops in slums, while Walala meticulously sewed together hundreds of labels from designer clothing to make an elegant comment on the rise of consumerism among the middle class.

This has inspired others, including Alex Njoroge, as could be seen at his recent exhibition with Kepha Mosoti.

Called Bar Conversations, it ended earlier this week at The Art Space off Riverside Drive, Nairobi.

Njoroge’s contribution was 14 panels of flattened, cut and burnt beer cans, plus two of patterns made from the bottoms of cans.

If the panels represent conversations, then one one level the main points of pub talk in the joints visited by Njoroge appear to be the dangers of drink, and the fact that you have to be 18 or over to consume it.

Nearly all the cans bore the warning, “Not for sale to persons under the age of 18” (occasionally cropped to omit the “not”) plus variations on the theme of “alcohol stops your brain from working so better not drive or operate machinery when completely bladdered,” or something like that. The constructions seemed to me to be lazy, but my main problem with this show was that the whole thing betrayed a sloppy, self-conscious approach.

If flattened beer cans are metaphors for pub talk — or as the blurb tells us, “discussions over daily life, disappointments and dreams, carried out once liquid lubricant is introduced” — then you may as well leave the gallery bare but for a notice telling us the walls are metaphors for everything said or seen while they were being built, or has once been on them, or has taken place within the space they enclose.

Surely a little more rigour is required?

Njoroge’s partner in crime, Mosoti, is a sculptor whose technical skill I have long admired. His style is super realism, and I remember a loaf of bread he had carved a couple of years ago. It looked realistic enough to reach for a slice.

Yet here, with a purse, a deflated football and five pairs of shoes mostly carved from strongly grained pine, he echoed the shapes and volumes but made no attempt to realise the surface textures of canvas, leather or rubber. In fact, the strong striations of the grain mitigated against any such endeavour.

Instead, Mosoti settled for the general look of the thing; no attempt at trompe l’oeil. His shoes stood as metaphors for the people at the bar.

Their titles Hasla paka mwisho (Hustler to the end) and Madam Flani (Mrs Particular) gave a clue to their wearers. They were OK but to be honest I have seen better from him and look forward to doing so again.

Njoroge’s strength is that some of the constructions were pleasant enough to look at. Fountain of Youth for instance was reasonably harmonious, but those made from the ends of cans were a disappointment… nothing you would not find in a curio stall.

To return to my original question about the acceptance of influences, why is it that Njoroge’s copycat work failed to excite me and did little to radiate his already slight theme, when I admire Ehoodi Kichapi’s rowdy canvases that remind us of Dubuffet or the ones strewn with graffiti and skulls that shriek Basquiat, and respect Beatrice Wanjiku’s vigorous charcoal drawings with their obvious overtones of Goya, Munch and Bacon?

I suspect the key is quality. But surely it is also because both Kichapi and Wanjiku offer thoughtful interpretations that develop the original concepts with a fusion of rich sources and stretch our imaginations in the process. They add something to the stockpile while Njoroge does not.

He works from just two sources — Kota and Walala — mimicking the style but not the substance.

He notes the strength of Kota’s patchworks but chooses the slack (and far less painful) route of stapling his flattened beer cans instead of hand-stitching them with steel wire. And his assemblages are literally not a patch on Walala’s intricate and hard-won compositions.

If it true that art is a journey then in the case of Njoroge, at least for now, the words of Confucius were never so true: It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

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