O’DA Art Gallery is pleased to present ‘Eternal Forms’, a Solo Exhibition by Multidisciplinary artist, Alimi Adewale.

In this body of work, Alimi weaves together the enigmatic tapestry of Cave paintings, Female Portraiture, and a collection of Sculpture pieces that explore the human form in all its glory.

Described as “cave painting”, Timeless Tales Series strikes a balance between private, playful, contemporary and historical. On one hand, the composition consists of scrawls (dashes, contour and diagonal lines), vivid and post-impressionistic bold colour schemes. On the other hand, Alimi’s use of acrylic and his interpretation of pictographs and petroglyphs, recall ancient artistic forms which existed before recorded history. As a matter of fact, pictographs and petroglyphs are recorded histories of human civilisations dating back to c.12000.

In addition, Alimi’s long standing interest in portraiture continues in Ethereal Gaze I-V, a set of five close-cropped paintings of women in a vivid, grid-like palette. For Alimi, this combination of using an age-long craft of stitching sack and canvas together and the contemporaneity of the acrylic medium extends his abiding interest in the interwoven relationships between historical epochs, forms of knowledge production and restless experimentation.

Alimis Mother Nature series, Carved from Ekii wood and installed on a Corten Steel Base, are deliberately disproportionate upon viewing, featuring long necks, hands and legs, along with outsized bodies and small heads and faces. The high stylization makes for a strong visual impact where function, among others, is a control technique of sorts.

Exhibition Dates: 15th July – 19th August, 2023