Ayotunde Ojo: These Four Walls

These Four Walls by Lagos-based painter Ayotunde Ojo moves between the idea of consciousness and unconsciousness, exploring the liminal qualities of memory and space, dreaming and waking. Rooted in the familiar context of domestic life, the paintings expand into emotional and imaginative realms, exploring how these transient moments shape perceptions. The artist’s debut solo exhibition, These Four Walls has its roots in a series of works Ojo completed at Southern Guild’s GUILD Residency in Cape Town earlier this year.

Ojo’s paintings exude a quiet and restrained elegance. Figures – still and solitary – lie recumbent over furniture or occupy themselves in the rituals of daily life: reading a book, washing the dishes, ironing clothes or scrolling on their phones. The colours are muted, as if viewing the scenes through a hazy veil. These works, like a deep exhale, convey a sense of calm and contemplation.

Methodically constructed, the paintings accrue their depth from the artist’s sensitive approach to his materials: thin films of paint hover over areas, the fine graphite linework just visible beneath. In some places the form dissolves completely to reveal the raw canvas; elsewhere the paint runs with abandon.

Doorways, window frames and tiled floors provide the coordinates for these intimate tableaux, governed by an internal framework of methodically drawn volumes. Point, line and plane extrude into forms whose structure holds firm even as their edges disintegrate, seep and drip. Embracing a more delicate and varied approach, Ojo pushes beyond the border of spatial logic, making paintings that negotiate realities both concrete and dreamlike. Figures emerge and dissolve with fluidity, reflecting a dynamic interplay within the compositions.

In Untitled (Self-Portrait), a man sits at a small round table engrossed by the objects in front of him. Behind the curling metal arm of the chair, the lower half of his body is only barely painted while before him the tablescape is rendered with vivid clarity. Just visible in an adjoining room, a woman is adjusting herself in a dressing table mirror. The figures are self-contained, independent of one another yet coexisting in comfort, reinforcing a duality the artist invites us to explore.

For me, the way paint is manipulated through textures, brushstrokes and colour holds its own narrative power, Ojo says. These elements create a sense of multiple possibilities unfolding within and beyond the canvas, capturing moments that feel suspended in time. The medium of paint becomes a tool to explore the fluidity of memory, space and consciousness. The domestic interior, with its orderly layout of interleading rooms and instantly recognisable taxonomy of urban life – bookshelf, potted plant, draped chair – unravels into a zone of becoming and unbecoming.

Since he began painting during the COVID-19 lockdown four years ago, Ojo has found significance in representations of repose, drawing inspiration from conversations, experiences and canonical works by historical artists. He is interested in the idea of rest and introspection, particularly as a respite from the chaos and intensity of everyday life in Lagos. The act of painting and the scenes he depicts are an antidote to the need to constantly be on your toes and on guard trying to exist under harsh conditions.

Ojo’s oeuvre delves into the intricate tapestry of human emotions and the profound dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Inspired by the subtleties of intimate moments and the nuanced language of gestures, his work transcends representation to suggest possibilities for a different future. In These Four Walls, we are witness to people just being – uninhibited, languorous, absorbed in the task at hand – as if having sloughed their skin to enter another realm. Far from voyeuristic, their presence is an invitation to a collective sense of ease that emanates from a lightness of touch.

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