In her latest solo, Nigerian-born, British-American artist ruby onyinyechi amanze (all lowercase) adopts the role of choreographer – intentionally positioning the cast of characters and structural elements she’s been building for the past decade onto paper surfaces and within the exhibition space. This approach was seen in her 2022 London exhibition, DUETS, and it is further crystalised with her Joburg show Light Blue Violet.
“Amanze imagines the space in her drawings as rooms that can be physically entered,” reads the exhibition text. “Figures and objects occupy these rooms in compositions that skew and call into question an assumed perspective. Although minor in their individual capacity, the effect of these smaller shifts produce a cumulative disorientation/reorientation. The disruption in the plane of the drawing spills out into how the artworks interact within the exhibition space.” A site-specific work titled Infinite Deep Blue, contained [POOL] takes this notion to its logical extreme, made according to the gallery wall dimensions.
The artist lives and works between Philadelphia and Brooklyn, and calls multiple places home.
Light Blue Violet opens at Goodman Gallery in Rosebank on Sat, Oct 5 from 10:30 with an introduction by Amanze and an experimental viewing session. The solo runs until Mon, Nov 11.
