"He is perched at the intersection of art practice and advocacy for the neo-liberation of the expression space.”

This wonderful example of art speak was a comment on the talented Churchill Ongere.

I haven’t a clue what it means but it hung next to 11 of his drawings in a recent pop-up exhibition.

One of these black and white drawings was of his familiar open cartons floating through space — symbols for the uncertainty and chaos brought by infinite possibilities; anything or nothing could fall from them — but the majority projected his study of human relationships.

Amoebic shapes, like parasites under a microscope, represented people navigating their shared space…. were they together or did their degree of separation indicate discord?

What heals any rift was shown as a solitary sheep, Offerings B, ambling palely across a black background. It referred to the traditional gift that ends disagreement and renews friendship.

This drawing was strongly reminiscent of the solitary sheep that helped to establish Peterson Kamwathi as a regional voice.

PROMINENCE

A marginally different idea — Kamwathi’s drawings reference people as victims of armed conflict — but the pose and prominence of the image were all too similar and the largely monochrome delivery was another echo.

For Kamwathi sheep represent victims, for Ongere they are peace offerings; both ideas with conflict at their heart.

The irony is that Offerings B was enjoyable in concept and execution. And it is true there is no copyright on wringing metaphors from sheep. But the extent to which one artist can borrow from another remains controversial — as if someone had made big paintings of sunflowers, or silkscreen prints of a film star like Marilyn.

There is nothing to stop them but surely an artist of Ongere’s talent could have created a different yet equally powerful image more in line with his own style… a shower of sheep tumbling through the void, for instance?

Showing with him was Patti Endo, who offered 15 drawings featuring her typically jumpy line to encompass nudes, portrait heads and a few figures seen from the front.

Her drawings are in the canon of those virtuoso illustrations made without lifting pen from paper; in Endo’s case a nervous yet fluent exploration of the human form.

They are clever, hard-won pieces in some of which depth is helped by superimposing the figures on background rectangles that push them in front of the picture plane. Again a clever solution, but unnecessary had the figures been given depth through a more expressive rather than decorative line.

PROVOCATIVE

A striking group of four drawings, together called Wo/man, featured figures some of whose limbs had been amputated; a mutilation that occurs elsewhere in this artist’s work but not so noticeably. They reminded me of the dark, edgy work of the Weimar satirist Otto Dix.

Their title indicated a universality of gender but there was no clue to the reason for the disfigurements. Perhaps it would be fanciful to imagine a deliberate — or even subconscious — allusion to the damage caused to people by a society in crisis.

This interesting and provocative show, organised by Willem Kevenaar of The Attic, was held in an office above the Wasp and Sprout bistro on Loresho Ridge, Nairobi.

There is more art speak to enjoy across the city at the Circle art gallery in Lavington, where the Ethiopians Robel Temesgen and Tegene Kunbi are having their first show in Kenya.

We are told, for instance that the drawings of traditional coffee pots (jebenas) by Temesgen, “interrogate the current socio-political landscape…” and depict “boundaries and dysfunction, control and containment….”

The abstracted landscapes of Kunbi, “explore the state of transformation” and together these artists confront, “rapid urban development, technology and the digital economy.”

What these paintings do not do, it seems, is save the whale, plant a tree, prevent climate change or make your breakfast. On the other hand, I could be doing them an injustice. They might.

What the catalogue would be entirely justified in stating is that the work of both these artists is achingly beautiful.

In form, colour and composition they ravish the senses and leave you with a feeling of wellbeing out of proportion to their size.

ENRICH ART SCENE

In the case of Kunbi, the scale of the work is one of its most astonishing attributes.

Some of his landscapes — expressed in grids of lines and rectangles— run up to a commanding 125.5 x 100cm while several others are a diminutive 15 x 15cm; about as wide as your hand.

On the wall the difference is apparent, yet in reproduction you are hard put to tell which is the bigger and which the smaller, a tribute to their mesmeric power.

Reduction does intensify but even allowing for that it is amazing that such small works can harness the strength of those almost 10 times bigger.

Great control and painterly skill lies too behind the acrylic wash and ink paintings of jebenas by Temesgen. Subtle colour combinations and insistent patterns play against the grey pottery bodies while in the several sculptures of these pots their presence consolidates a handsome physicality.

This exhibition marks a vibrant Kenyan debut for these two artists — Temesgen lectures in painting at Addis Ababa University while Kunbi is based in Berlin — and Circle is to be congratulated for bringing them here to enrich the regional scene.

Even if they have yet to make my breakfast.