Sola Olulode, Your heartbeat became my neighbour, 2023
"The paintings almost uniformly depict joyful intimacy, yet there’s a compelling friction on their surfaces and between the different materials deployed. In Sunlight (2019), translucent sheets of blue wax overlap to make up the clothing adorning two bodies. A thick black outline surrounds each, while the backdrop’s yellow paint has been etched with tiny circles. The central figures’ faces are neighboured by pale floating heads, where the batik process has masked the canvas. The figures don’t look as content as some of Olulode’s other couples – they have fugitive facial features, after all. But the work is an example of the show at its best: when works foreground their materiality in this way; when the paintings’ materials accrue emotional resonance and become significant to what they depict."
