Artist Toyin Odutola works it – in ball point pen, ink and markers, creating strong black portraits with textured flashes of color. Their appearance reminds us of strobe lights in a disco, beautifully projected and woven onto women and men of color. High impact, no-nonsense and gorgeous in-your-face portraits.
Nigerian-born Toyin grew up mostly in Alabama, receiving her BA from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She recently finished her MFA in painting and drawing at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco.
She has a solo show coming up in New York at the Jack Shainman Gallery, on May 16th.
“Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I’m looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.”
The detail (above) is cropped from the piece directly below…
LINK – to Toyin’s website.
Please “Like” and follow Eclectix, here on FaceBook.
The post Toyin Odutola Works It appeared first on Eclectix.