ruby onyinyechi amanze – Saltwater

SALTWATER is the first solo show of ruby onyinyechi amanze at the Goodman Gallery. An odd combination of two essential elements, the show symbolizes the diffuse and mysterious realm inhabited by her cohort of hybrid forms. The large-scale drawings foreground her concern with metamorphosis and imagination as a lense through which multiple and often, disparate layers of meaning, histories, and forms can be simultaneously read.

The world within the drawings, alludes to a non- specific, boundaryless place and time. Instead, there is a sense of exemption, as detached characters float in a vast timeless expanse. Existing somewhere between constructed reality, fantasy, memory and imagination, these distinct beings find authenticity, wholeness and freedom in their ability to equally belong nowhere and everywhere.

<figcaption> amanze, The weight of nothing [even plants fly], 2015.Courtesy: Goodman

With a background in textiles, photography and printmaking, amanze’s current practice is deeply centered in her first love, drawing. There is an ephemeral quality to her drawing and she delights in the materiality of her medium (mainly, paper, graphite ink and photo transfers). Seen in the gallery, her organic forms, hybrid anatomies, and graphic patterns coalesce in capricious narratives that no digital reproduction can match.

For amanze the work is “as much about beauty and make-believe, as it is a commentary on cultural hybridity” and it “isn’t social science, it’s magic-realism and the power of drawing to invent worlds for ourselves.” SALT WATER offers a metaphor through which to understand the oddity, absurdity, subtlety and power of elements that naturally co-exist in the world.

<figcaption> amanze, Baptized (the others are with you always), 2015. Courtesy: Goodman

amanze is a Nigerian-born artist, who spent her formative years in Britain before relocating to the United States. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City. amanze graduated with a Masters of Fine Art from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (Michigan) in 2006 and in 2012/2013, was a Fulbright Scholar Recipient in Art at the University of Nigeria. amanze has been included in numerous exhibitions in Nigeria, US, the UK, and the Netherlands.

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