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GALLERIES: A last waltz for The Dancing Pen?

Saturday November 18 2017
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Music Man, left, and Is Rhythm All Right?, by Kaafiri Kariuki. PHOTOS | FRANK WHALLEY | NMG

By FRANK WHALLEY

The computer age might have claimed another victim — Kaafiri Kariuki and the meticulous drawings that made his name.

Kariuki created them using the sort of Rotring pens favoured by architects and exhibited them to acclaim under the title The Dancing Pen.

But as architects moved to their computers and produced their drawings with programmes like ArchiCAD, the pens and their coloured ink cartridges became increasingly scarce.

Recently Kariuki has had to import his cartridges from China but, bowing perhaps to the inevitable, he has subtly changed his methods, using only black ink, fewer lines and a less surrealist style in his latest work.

The exhibition can be seen until the end of this month at the Banana Hill Art Gallery; where among 30 drawings the later ones are more literal and made in black ink on stark white paper.

But it has to be said that it is the earlier, more familiar style that catches the eye.

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As though determined to go out with a bang, Kaafiri Kariuki (whose name translates roughly as Africa Resurrected) has produced a large pair, Freedom Fighter I and Freedom Fighter II, that hangs as a diptych near the front doors and greets visitors to the gallery.

Finished on board, they are his largest works yet in the Dancing Pen style… myriads of fine contoured lines in glowing colours that shimmer before the eye.

On the left is Kenya’s founding president Jomo Kenyatta presented as a Mau Mau leader surrounded by symbols of Kenya’s fight for Independence. In his left hand is a burning spear, the name by which some knew him, while his right hand holds a picture of women working in the fields and on his feet are his trademark sandals.

On the right, Freedom Fighter II, is a woman also set amid symbols of the liberation struggle. At around $6,000 apiece these are not only the most elaborate but also the most expensive drawings in the exhibition.

Kariuki’s last show was in 2012, so his admirers are perhaps due an expensive treat. He has a droll sense of humour that comes across in his work if not his prices.

In two of his drawings, Un-Forbidden Fruit (a couple copulating, if somewhat discretely) and Slay Queen II, the heads are turned upside down which, says the artist, denotes that they are crazy.

Other typical images include traffic signs. We are all travellers on the road of life, he points out, and these signs help to guide us on our way.

One of them was a No Entry.

His humour also shines through in other works, such as Walking Encyclopedia, a reference to Africa’s oral history and storytelling traditions that shows a book with a human face and legs.

Kariuki’s subjects are almost frenziedly detailed and his compositions convoluted yet balanced. Although some may make your head spin at first sight, all will stand the test of time and are likely to release new niceties the longer you stare.

His work is labour-intensive, many taking months to complete and one an entire year. They are essentially illustrative, the mechanically controlled regularity of each line (0.4mm wide with 0.2mm for finishing) removing the possibility of any expressive variations.

But they are fun, soaked in colours (deep red against light blue being a favourite combination, together with singing yellows and vibrant greens) and the pun in the title or the message the picture contains are there to be found.

Typical of Kariuki’s new style is Black Smith (the two words are his) an intricate illustration of a man at work enriched by an insider’s appreciation of the job.

Kariuki once worked in a smithy and in a drawing that shows the smith forging bombs and spears, his description of the dignity of labour combined with his message of moral condemnation suggests a Hogarth in the making.

That one goes for $1,900, while the cheapest works on sale, at $700 each, are five black ink drawings on light brown paper that mimic the texture and depth of drypoint etchings; only the bite marks of plate into paper are missing.

Kariuki’s typical full colour Dancing Pen drawings start at about $1,800 and average around $2,500, making this an unusually expensive show for Banana, where you can usually pick up a charming little painting for as little as $30.

Cynics claim anything is worth whatever you can get for it, and I like a man who knows his worth. If intensive labour merits reward, then Kariuki deserves every dollar.

With work so meticulous and the result so rich — textured and dense like some luxurious fabric — I can well imagine Kariuki becoming an outsider cult figure, not unlike the Victorian painter Richard Dadd whose obsessively detailed paintings of the fairy folk have delighted generations.

Let us hope however that Kariuki will not end up like “Mad Dadd.”

Unfortunately Dadd was himself away with the fairies, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He murdered his father and ended up dying in Broadmoor asylum… which tends to make most of our own troubles seem rather trivial.

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