Published in The East African Newspaper, June 15, 2019
by Frank Whalley
There is a new trend developing in exhibiting art — or at least a new take on an old one.
For many years, art has left the galleries to be shown in furniture showrooms and restaurants but recently there has been a move into active working spaces too.
Viewers, by appointment, tip-toe past desks and filing cabinets to get a look at what’s on the walls.
A recent example was the exhibition by photographer Joy Maringa and print-maker Anthony Wanjohi in the offices of Media HQ in Nairobi’s Loresho suburb, curated by Willem Kevenaar, of the Attic Art Space.
Now the edgy expressionism of Shabu Mwangi is on show in just nine paintings at the offices of the CrossBoundary finance house at ABC Place in Westlands.
It was curated by Caroline Tilleard who recently moved to Kenya from New York, where she had a gallery in Manhattan.
Mwangi’s show is the first of a planned series of pop-ups at CrossBoundary, on the first floor of an uber-smart block in the middle of the car park, with access by a rather small lift.
Tilleard met Mwangi when she held a residency in Lamu and, impressed by the authenticity of his painting, organised this solo show.
SYMBOLISM
Called Yawning for Power (not Yearning but with the same meaning; after all, if you are hungry you do in fact yawn) it will be on until the end of this month.
Grotesquely distorted figures leer from the walls, their glittering teeth chomping with an eagerness for power, salivating with their greed to attain it — only, we suspect, for them then to abuse it thoroughly.
Symbolism is there for those who seek it. The exhibition’s signature work, also Yawning for Power, is of a figure in white wearing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army olive green cap with its single red star.
And as always with Mwangi, sinister sentiments are expressed through the subtle use of strong colour and luscious application of paint.
In fact, these works seem to be as much about the process of painting as they are about power. With figures distorted almost to abstraction, the bravado of the brushwork becomes even more evident.
The problems that face any artist pursuing an argument through the liquidity of paint are on display: negotiating the balance between the beauty of the finished object and the rigour of its thesis.
Here, Mwangi walks the tightrope with accustomed ease.
MESSAGES
For while these artworks are messages — warnings, if you like — about the brutal acquisition and misuse of power they also work on a formal level as objects that can be enjoyed purely as paintings, as though their raison d’etre lay in offering pleasure from the paint itself; the succulent swathes of pigment, the richness of the colours and the harmony of the compositions.
Here the oils slide easily, slickly, over the rough tooth of canvas, seductive in their inevitability and convincing with the healthy glow of their physicality.
Mwangi so clearly enjoys the act of painting that like Beatrice Wanjiku — another artist who explores our deepest fears and worst obsessions — he brings to it light, no matter the darkness of the subject.
As a colourist, Mwangi excites. Never flashy but with a sonorous palette, he utilises the complementaries of a crimson line against dark green (Lost in Giving) and in Wrapped in Silence he startles us with a loosely brushed lemon yellow that parts like a bow wave before the prow of a black, jutting chin.
It is this combination of warnings wrapped in splendour that makes these works so formidable and their creator so essential a voice.
And in their out-of-gallery setting they relate more easily if uncomfortably to us and to our daily experience.