At 1-54 London 2024, Ed Cross is delighted to present For Crying Out Loud, a solo presentation of new and recent work by Abe Odedina. Seven years after his 2017 debut, Odedina's showcase marks a notable return to the fair, exemplifying a practice that has evolved whilst retaining its core magnetism.
Through his distinctive approach – simultaneously irreverent and sincerely celebratory of life’s many small miracles – Odedina challenges traditional categories of thought and craft, blending elements of folk art, mythology, and everyday life to create vibrant compositions that revel in the "casually fantastic.”
Since 2007 when he began to paint, the artist’s practice has been characterised by both his materials – Odedina paints on board instead of canvas – and his distinctive fusion of compositional elements. His tableaus embody solidity and practicality on one hand, while inviting viewers into a world where boundaries blur and narratives intertwine on the other. The works presented at 1-54 London 2024 are a curated selection of Odedina’s most recent works, each operating as a portal to a world where myth and reality collide.
A major work on display, Madame Lasirenn delves into the complexities of identity formation, encouraging its audience to reflect on the myriad aspects of their own personalities. Odedina's depiction of the siren, seated on a pearl shell chair and surrounded by diverse objects, speaks to the counterintuitive multiplicity of individuality - facets picked up and put down like so many items on a desk. Contrasting the everyday setting with Lasirenn's sacred status in Haitian vodou - and in West African cosmology as Mami Wata - Madame Lasirenn exemplifies Odedina’s instinct for staging collisions of extraordinary and ordinary.
Odedina's paintings engage a unique blend of eternal and immediate concerns; an ongoing negotiation between reality and fiction. Featuring figures from diverse mythologies – Yoruba, Haitian, Ancient Greek – alongside ordinary passers-by and characters born from his own imagination, Odedina’s juxtaposition of the mythical and the mundane invites his viewer to both question the hushed awe with which we approach art objects, and to identify the magic in their own lives that might merit memorialising.
Odedina's work serves as a testament to the enduring relevance of folk traditions in a rapidly changing world, while questioning the validity of ‘folk art’ in the first place. His is a practice that refuses categorisation while never failing to enrich the wider conversation – about beauty, material, and nothing less than the meaning of art itself.
Odedina’s work is in a number of major international collections including The British Government Art Collection, the Serge Tiroche Collection, and the collection of Jorge Pérez. His recent solo exhibitions include I’m a Believer at Ed Cross, London, 2023; Independent Art Fair, New York (2023); You Give Me Fever, Diane Rosenstein, Los Angeles, (2022); Cutting Edge, Ed Cross at Clerkenwell Gallery, London (2021); Just Looking, Ed Cross at ArtX, Lagos, (2020); and Birds of Paradise, Ed Cross at Copeland Gallery, London (2019).
