Mòyósóre Martins Debut Solo Exhibit at Path Galleries LA
Harlem True Love Story, 2021, Oil on Canvas, Triptych 60 x 144 in.
ARTIST RECEPTION
Saturday, September 18th
6:00—10:00 pm
PATH GALLERIES
1071 Glendon Avenue, Westwood
Los Angeles, CA 90024
info@pathgalleries.com
Through My Very Own Eyes, 2021
Oil on Canvas, Mixed Media, Collage 60 x 96 in.
We are pleased to present Nigerian-New York artist Moyosore Martins' debut solo exhibition, Irànti (Nostalgia), at the new Path Galleries in Westwood, Los Angeles from September 18 to November 14, 2021.
Raised in Lagos, Nigeria by a Brazilian father and a Nigerian mother from Ekiti state, Moyosore Martins is a self-taught contemporary mixed-media artist who picked up a paintbrush and pencil at a young age to fuel his innately curious and spiritual nature. Martins’ artistic expression is narrative in nature and combines figurative and abstract painting inspired by his unique human experience. His bold oil brushstrokes, drawings, scribbles, layering of materials in appliqué, and use of text are obscured within each painting and symbolize spiritual elements from protection to wishes fulfilled. Martins also works in three-dimensional form often working in clay, creating iconic figures reminiscent of traditional African statues which he infuses with his unique iconography and meaning. Moyosore Martins' unique symbolic work brings his traditional Yoruba cultural roots and contemporary vision of art to the forefront.
Egun Meji, 2019
Oil on Canvas, 66 x 70 in.
"My artwork is intentionally raw. I like to use a lot of different materials and have rough-cut edges on the canvas. My paintings are textured with scratches, scribbles, and mud-like paint, as well as clay, liquid plastic, oil sticks, chunky layers of oil paint. I layer the backgrounds and then deconstruct them. Each painting has encrypted messages and symbolic patterns within them. I want to merge the vision with the given and to the new world that I live in now. The word ‘Why?’ is seen in a lot of my work because it leaves you asking the same question." — Moyosore Martins
Starting in childhood, Martins needed an outlet for the intense dreams he would experience. He turned to creativity as a way to understand his dreams, filling the margins of his school notebooks with doodles and drawings. The discovery of these musings by Martins’ father, who forbade him to create or study art, drew severe punishment that foreshadowed the nature of Martins’ work. With a desire for the freedom to focus on his art and career, Martins immigrated to New York City in 2015 to develop his distinct artistic style with great seriousness and fervor. Today, he exclusively eats, drinks, and breathes art. The streets of London, New York, and his college years in Ghana and the Ivory Coast are blended in his artwork to showcase all that is Moyosore Martins’.
Moyosore Martins in his Harlem Studio, 2021
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