Remy Jungerman: BLUE OBIA

Fridman Gallery presents BLUE OBIA, Remy Jungerman’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, featuring a new body of work that deepens Jungerman’s long-standing engagement with the visual and spiritual ties among Surinamese Maroon culture, West Africa, and 20th century Modernism.

Employing materials deeply rooted in the Afro-Surinamese religion Winti—cotton textile, kaolin clay (pimba), and wood—Jungerman’s panels, cubes, and free-standing sculptures feature richly layered yet minimalist compositions. Invoking the African diasporic practice of Obia (or Obeah or Obiya)—a term associated with healing, protection, and ancestral guidance—this new body of work reflects on the power of ritual to connect the seen and the unseen, the past and the present.

In a new series of panels titled Pimba BAAU, the color blue becomes a central force. BAAU means blue in Saramaccan, the language of the Saamaka, one of the seven Maroon communities in Suriname. Referencing the Surinamese practice of applying a dab of Reckitt’s bluing tablets, a laundry product, behind babies’ ears to protect them from evil influences, Jungerman begins with a blue base from which he builds a grid consisting of pencil lines, textile and kaolin clay.

A large panel titled Three Rivers II consists of a grid upon which Jungerman maps his ongoing project to merge water from the three rivers that connect his life and work—the Cotitca in Moengo, Suriname, the Amstel in Amsterdam, and the Hudson River in New York. Three Rivers II invites a broader reflection on the historical connections among New York, the Netherlands, and Suriname that resulted from the transatlantic slave trade, and the impact this movement of people and art-making traditions has had on the history of art.

Marking a significant moment in Jungerman’s development as an artist, BLUE OBIA is a space of convergence where geometry meets spirit and repetition becomes ritual.

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