Duo show ""LOST IN THE CROWD""
Olivia Mae Pendergast & Larry Otoo
Catalogues
Olivia Mae Pendergast
"...Painting the world around her in Kenya does not in any way imply the search for effects that could be described as sensational. She captures "ordinary" people in their "quotidian" activities and makes them enter our visual field with ease.
The characters are painted from the front or in profile, without any particular pose, captured "as they are”. The body always occupies much more space in proportion to the head; the effects of volume reside much more in the traces left by the brushes than in a deliberate search for structure.
However, if you take the trouble to observe the canvas, nothing is left to chance. First, the backgrounds are very worked, but at the same time very discreet, all in lightness, embellished with decorative patterns (arabesques and interlacing) generally completely out of context. They assume their role, but nevertheless they carry their own strength and evocative power.
The artist breaks down light and color into a sort of very balanced checkerboard dominated by shades of red which nevertheless show black people; the effect is very striking! This apparent simplicity conceals great creativity and the search for undetectable effects and the results are obvious, these paintings are beautiful and they move us. Their share of mystery also tickles our imagination.
All the poetry of her work emerges in this way, with great subtlety. And you feel its charm and sweetness at the same time as its force, not an aggressive, invasive, obvious force, but one of those forces which start from the bottom of the soul and can overturn worlds..."
Sylvain Sankale
Art Critic
Dakar, Senegal
Larry Otoo
"...The objects used by both the merchants and buyers, depending on the circumstances, also create variables that have a strong identity. The power of the artist, using the old formula of the alchemists, is to find order; order from the primordial chaos.
Loving to represent human encounters in traditional situations (markets, festivals, etc.) in his country, Larry OTOO finds there his favorite material; the play of tin roofs, that of umbrellas and parasols that mark elegant territories, the contours of the narrow streets that make up the many graphic motifs that structure his paintings, especially since the often unusual point of view helps to give them an attractive new perspective.
A Ghanaian painter, Larry OTOO is also a painter from Ghana, this country, his country, which inspires his creation. The small portraits of women that accompany these larger works are apparently only a fragment, the best chosen, of his most ambitious works. The palette remains the same, the intention as well and the isolation and solitude of the subject do not give it less strength or charm.
These colorful portraits are as if descended from other paintings to be better admired and it is with great pleasure that we admire them as well. In these gloomy and distressing times, Larry OTOO's paintings are like a ray of sunshine that soothes, warms and invigorates us..."
Sylvain Sankale
Art Critic
Dakar, Senegal
"Lost in the Crowd" - 24/10 - 29/11/20
OOA Gallery, Carrer Nou 1, 08870 Sitges - Barcelona, Spain
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