By John Owoo
(In Accra – Ghana)
An exhibition of stylized wooden sculptures with seductive strokes – that invoke spirituality and melodic undertones by Kofi Agorsor – ended last week at Gallery 1957, which is located in the premises of Kempinski Hotel in Accra.
Curated by Robin Beth Riskin – the show features human figures – some of which possess tiny heads alongside extreme bottoms, which tend to create an aura of mysticism thereby recalling historical images of goddesses and scenes from African mythology.
Titled “Tudɛvie” (Calling or Awakening), the show equally features “hundreds” of miniature sculptures that surround a giant one in a concentric ring. Undeniably, the artist has been developing these slow growth sculptures over the past ten years.
Indeed, Agorsor’s exploration of shape-shifting positions within and beyond established frameworks for art alongside bodies filled with geometric and fragmented patterns pose several questions.
These include “Where to Fit a Fellow who Flows like Water?”, “Is the Artist a Modernist or Contemporary?” “Does his Art Live in the Objects or in the Social Processes that Produced Them?” and “Is his Thinking Ewe, African, Global or Transcendent?”
Pieces from “Tudɛvie” are arranged in performative scenes – shrine-like, stage-like while nesting and singing in the well-lit gallery. Again, light and sound act as mediums in a cosmic interplay between the art and environment, between the object and its (con)text.
Agorsor possesses a distinctive approach to the distortion of shapes and forms while working in defiance of perspectives and discarding proportions. Nevertheless, he emphasizes the beauty of the supernatural as he contradicts the standard principles of balance, shape and proportion.
Trained at the Ankle and Ghanatta Colleges of Art in Accra, Accra, he has been practicing in Accra while exhibiting all over the world. Also a musician, his music inspires his artworks and has become a bounteous source of material and catalyst for his work aiding him explore coherence, tempo and equilibrium.
