Rele Los Angeles presents Mapping Structures: Across Worlds, a group exhibition featuring works by Patrick Akpojotor, Paul Onditi and Soo Kim.
The three-dimensional space plays a fundamental role in our perception and understanding of the physical world. It establishes points of existence, movement and relation between objects. From different theories on its mode of existence — as an entity on its own, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework — the three-dimensional space serves as the structural basis for the creation of tangible realities. Whole communities, economies and modes of living arise from the construction, organization and movement of objects within diverse spatial contexts. How then do we understand the multiple realities of being and existing, access and movement, within this three-dimensionality?
The exhibition brings together artists whose work engages with the idea of physical space and architecture through processes of geometric abstraction and distortion of three-dimensional space. Presenting the experience of space as a dynamic, often volatile construct grounded in the relationships between various compositional parts, the exhibition is focused on formally engaging diverse constructivist approaches to space as well as teasing out the many ways they affect our social, economic and political lives in contemporary society. How have the structures we’ve built over time contributed to or taken away from the quality of life? What role do these structures play in granting or restricting access and movement between them? What new futures can be imagined from the distortion and reconstruction of existing space?
The exhibition also considers the gradual build-up of forms and objects through the layering and construction of design elements. The artists presented employ an investigatory approach to the pictorial and compositional space in their practice, presenting alternate representations of the built environment.
Patrick Akpojotor (b. 1982) is Lagos-based multidisciplinary artist working across painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. His work is influenced by his fascination with built space and architecture and its ability to shape one’s identity. His practice explores differences in human attitude as they relate to the culture of the built environment they inhabit. Merging together visual references of built environment, geography, human forms and imagined structures, he interrogates our sense of balance and perception, challenging us to see differently.
Akpojotor has been included in exhibitions at the Bishop Museum, Honolulu, USA; 1:54 Art Fair (2021), London, UK; and Art X Lagos (2022), Lagos, Nigeria, where he was awarded the prize for emerging artists in 2016. He has had solo exhibitions at SMO Contemporary, Lagos, Nigeria; Robinson Art Gallery, Belgium; Allouche Gallery, New York, USA.
Paul Onditi (b. 1980) is a Nairobi-based artist, whose practice challenges our understanding of cultural topography as well as the physical world in which we exist. Addressing themes of pollution, climate change, fragmented and unequal societies, and the degradation of our natural planet, Onditi composes intricate and complex masterpieces portraying societal chaos and decay on his preferred canvas of digital polyester inkjet plates.
Solo exhibitions include 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London, UK; Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, South Africa; Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar Senegal; and the MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy. He also participated in the 57th Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy. His works are included in the Robert Devereux Collection, the Richard Branson Collection and the East African Visual Arts Trust.
Soo Kim (b. 1969) is an LA-based artist who works with paper-based digital prints made from digital photographs to construct complex renderings of familiar places in our daily experience of the world.
Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Getty Center, Los Angeles; The 2002 Gwangju Biennale, Korea; Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina; the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles; Art Sonje, Korea; Islip Art Museum, New York; the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, New York; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; and the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Kim’s work is in the public collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Broad Foundation, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, North Carolina Museum of Art, and The Escalette Collection of Art, Chapman University.
She is currently a professor and Program Director of Photography, and heads the Critic-in-Residence program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.