Ethiopian artist Wosene Worke Kosrof explores the aesthetic potential of symbols from the Amharic script.
He began distorting the symbols of his language 35 years ago and it is now an integral part of his work.
His exhibition Wordplay is being shown at London’s newly opened Gallery of African Art.
He told BBC Africa’s Jenny Horrocks how he came to work in this way.
Watch the video at BBC News.
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Tadias Magazine
Art Talk
Updated: Monday, January 23, 2012
New York (TADIAS) – In the heart of Chelsea, one of the centers of the New York art world, lays a gem for African art lovers. Skoto Gallery that opened in 1992 is one of the first contemporary African art galleries in the United States focusing on a mix of artists from the continent and the Diaspora.
Since its inaugural exhibition two decades ago – curated by jazz icon Ornet Coleman and held at its previous location in SoHo – the gallery has mounted memorable shows highlighting artists hailing from several African countries including Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Cameroon, and Senegal.
In a recent press release Skoto Gallery announced that it is preparing to host its 20th Anniversary Exhibition this week featuring works by at least seventeen contemporary artists including Ethiopians Etiye Dimma Poulsen, Wosene Kosrof, and Tesfaye Tessema.
(Photo: Inaugural exhibition at Skoto Gallery, 1992)
“It is tempting to talk about Skoto Gallery as a secret treasure of the New York art scene; but doing so brings up a lot of contradictory data,” wrote poet and critic Geoffrey Jacques. “For instance, how does a “secret” survive two decades in a historically tough scene made even tougher by the cultural and economic head winds that have buffeted art, the New York art world, and the world in general in the last few years?” He added: “To say the quality of the work shown at Skoto Gallery during these last twenty years is responsible for its success would be one obvious truth. There is, however, more to it than that. Skoto Gallery performs a vital intervention into the very idea of contemporary art.”
In an interview with Tadias Magazine a few years ago, gallery owner Skoto Aghahowa stressed the importance of having a greater understanding of the creative process, the environment in which artists operate, as well as marketing and communication skills within the African artist community. “A piece of art work retains its value when one strikes a balance between scholarly work and commercial success,” Skoto said. “The most important work of an art dealer is to be familiar with the work of world artists, not just African artists, and to help create a context in which the work can be understood and appreciated.”
Geoffrey Jacques noted: “I remember being so moved by a 1995 exhibition of works by two sculptors that I had to write about them. The pairing was, at first glance, audacious: Tom Otterness, from Kansas, who lived in New York; and Bright Bimpong, from Ghana, who was, at the time, studying in New Jersey. It was the kind of beautiful exhibition we’re now used to seeing at Skoto Gallery.”
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If You Go:
Skoto Gallery
20th Anniversary Exhibition
January 26th – February 25 , 2012
Reception: Thursday, January 26th, 6-8pm
529 West 20th Street, 5thFL
New York, NY 10011
www.skotogallery.com
Above: A Taste for Words by Wosene Worke Kosrof , 2008,
acrylic on canvas, 44×41 inches.
Events News
Published: Monday, October 19, 2009
New York – Skoto Gallery is pleased to present WordPlay, an exhibition of recent paintings by the Ethiopian-born artist Wosene Worke Kosrof. This will be his fourth solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, October 22nd, 6-8pm and the artist will be present.
Wosene Worke Kosrof’s recent work continues his long-standing inventive exploration of the interplay between language, identity, aesthetic beauty and material, using the language symbols of Amharic – one of the few ancient written systems in Africa – as a core compositional element. He is a prolific artist who has consistently employed a vocabulary of signs and symbols, a rigorous compositional organization and uncompromising ability to fuse form and concept with the narrative power of his work in his encounters with history and global transformations over the past three decades. He elongates, distorts, disassembles and re-configures the language characters in a wide-ranging palette, moving beyond literal conventions of words, to create a visual language that deftly incorporates sounds, textures and rhythms of jazz, but that also speaks boldly and clearly to a universal audience.
Wosene’s work draws upon an individual reserve of personal and collective memories to activate a meaningful form of engagement that celebrates the richness of his homeland’s graphic systems, textiles, architectural forms, language and music. He employs the textured and improvisational qualities in his work, imbued with a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality in his search for symbols and metaphors that explore ideas of spirituality, space and motion, expanding the boundaries of art and consciousness. There is a resonance of personal truth, vision, circumstances and tradition embedded in his work that make us simply believe in the power of art to speak to us in purely human terms.
Wosene Kosrof
Wosene Worke Kosrof was born 1950 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and received a BFA from The School of Fine Art, Addis Ababa and a MFA from Howard University, Washington DC in 1980. He is an artist of international reputation, widely exhibited in Africa, Europe, Japan, the US and the Caribbean. Recent exhibitions include Transformations: Recent Contemporary African Art Acquisitions, Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2009, Mexican Heritage Plaza Museum, San Jose, California 2006, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY 2003; Newark Museum, Newark, NJ 2004; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pa 2004, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 2004; and Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa, Whitechapel Gallery, London 1995. Collections include the National Museum, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, The Newark Museum, NJ; The Neuberger Museum at Purchase, NY; Birmingham Museum of Art, AL; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN, the Fowler Museum, UCLA, Ca; Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida, Gainesville, Fl; and The Voelkerkunde Museum, Zurich, Switzerland as well as many international private and corporate collections.
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If you go:
Skoto Gallery
529 West 20th Street
5thFL
New York, NY 10011
Phone Number
212.352.8058
www.skotogallery.com