Wole Lagunju: Cut From The Same Cloth

Based in North Carolina, Wole Lagunju is best known for his large scale figurative works, splicing images of dominant Western visual culture — models and celebrities, from magazines and museums — with diverse Nigerian motifs, in particular Gelede masks traditionally used by male dancers to play female parts in masquerade. Following ideas and uncanny characters first extrapolated in We all live here, 2020, an exhibition of his (smaller, stranger) ink drawings with Ed Cross, Cut From The Same Cloth seeks to bridge the gap between two distinct strands of Lagunju’s practice: conceptually, and physically, too.

Displayed alongside new large scale works on canvas, exemplary of Lagunju’s ongoing Gelede series, familiarly ambivalent countenances ripple into view once more; rendered in the same oil paints as their neighbours on the same material surface, their themes and sensibilities share more with their inky predecessors. Applying pigment with a pallet knife onto canvas offcuts, Lagunju’s new series is literally cut from the same cloth as his larger works — exhibited together, each illuminates aspects of itself in the other: not so different after all.

edcrossfineart.com