Rele Gallery, Los Angeles is pleased to present Reading Abstraction: The Space Between, a group exhibition featuring the works of contemporary African artists Sedireng Mothibatsela, Agnes Waruguru, Sabrina Coleman-Pinheiro and IyunOla Sanyaolu. The exhibition examines the diverse and layered use of abstraction; each of the artists use various textures, mediums and acts of mark-making to engage in the transcendental act of space and world-making. The abstract space here is alive and constantly evolving, serving as both familiar and uncharted terrain.
Reading Abstraction: The Space Between imagines the abstract as both dynamic and specific, a place of unfolding histories and modernities. A place of simultaneous interiority and exteriority. From the intimate to the impersonal, the exhibition explores the possibilities of abstract forms in creating new languages, philosophies and worlds unbound by–yet drawn from–material reality. Throughout the works, visual elements such as line, form, color and texture become vehicles and sites for the creation and exploration of immersive worlds and narratives. Reading Abstraction: The Space Between operates within the interstices and gaps between meaning, generating new ways of looking.
Present in the works of Mmabatho Grace Mokalapa is the investigation of the sublime qualities and experience of physical space. Her geometric, futuristic paintings explore the notion of spatial voids. Voids that are depersonal, infinite and transcendental. Intricately constructed shapes convey a vastness and monumentality of unknown and unexplored terrains.
Sedireng Mothibatsela’s work explores the qualities of objects as containers and repositories of memories and personal histories. Combining Abstract Minimalism and Realism styles, her work juxtaposes the real against the imagined, creating a hybrid space for activating memory.
Agnes Waruguru’s work echoes and responds to the landscapes and environments in which she finds herself, offering instinctive speculations on the physical and metaphysical space. At once familiar and dreamlike, her work aims to represent
the feeling of place rather than its physicality. IyunOla Sanyaolu’s paintings imagine the self as an intimate, exploratory space. Grounded in Abstract Figuration, her paintings explore solitude as a site of confrontation and solace.
