Putting On The Sky
Solo exhibition in Tokyo, Japan curated by Dexter Wimberly
Opening Reception, November 17
On view November 18 - December 20, 2023
KOKI ARTS
01-0031 Rose Building 1F,
1-15-2 Higashikanda, Chiyoda-ku Tokyo
www.kokiarts.com
Koki Arts in collaboration with Dexter Wimberly is pleased to present Putting On The Sky, the Guyana born/Harlem based artist Ivan Forde’s debut solo presentation in Tokyo of a new suite of “blueprint paintings.” Recognized for innovations in the cyanotype process on epic scales, Forde’s practice is primarily concerned with poetic symbols, and how they change, or stay the same, in different cultural disaporic contexts. The works on view coalesce into a multi-sensory environment bringing painting, alternative process photography, sound/video performance, and wearable sculptures into conversation. Drawing inspiration from artists depictions of seascapes such as Ashley Bryan’s collages of Langston Hughes poems, Romare Bearden’s watercolors and Chris Ofili’s oil paintings of Homer’s Odyssey, Botticelli's and Rauchenberg’s drawings of Dante’s Inferno, William Blake’s mezzotints of Paradise Lost, Hokusai and Kuniyoshi woodblock prints and visiting Giotto’s Scrovegni areana chapel in Padua, Forde’s suite of paintings demonstrate his maturing practice that is steeped in the long tradition of artists making work informed by their engagement with poetic texts.
Forde’s blueprint paintings are created from a photochemical process that responds to sunlight. He focuses on the key visual structures of epic poetry such as: the sea storm, the night battle, decent to the underworld, banquets, and reception scenes toward his own epic where viewers follow a fisherman’s journey from the surface of the sea deep down to the ocean floor, through portals of light, into outer space, and back to Earth again.
A self portrait of the artist photographed nude in profile with one arm outstretched in front of him reappears across multiple canvases. This is Forde in character performing as Adapa: a mythic sage who appears in the early cycle of Sumerian epic poetry as a cook and a fisherman who ultimately transcends these roles to become a builder of poetic language and culture. Performing self portraits in his studio for the camera that are printed as cyanotypes layered with painting techniques and collage elements, Forde takes the epic journey himself and brings us along with him, following Adapa’s path from the surface of the splendorous ocean, down into the blue-black depths, encountering sea sages (collaged hybrids of Forde’s body with fish anatomy) who show him magic spells and healing remedies until summoned to high heaven to answer for breaking the south wind’s wing with the power of his words. He is received at the gate of heaven, is clothed, and offered oil before his meal with the Sky God Anu. Adapa/Forde/We refuse the food and drink that would have brought eternal life only to return to Earth sharing the wisdom of manifestation and the healing power of poetry with all humanity forever.
Forde has produced cyanotype based works for close to a decade and has influenced contemporary approaches to the early photographic process through painting and collage at epic scale. Forde uses the process of an underpainting to explore the poetics of the surface and texture of the ocean in this group of seascape paintings. He uses bright fluorescent colors on the raw linen, building up dimensional fields and abstracted gestures. The underpainting is then covered with ultra thin Kozo (mulberry) paper that has been emulsified with cyanotype solution exposed to sunlight and washed out with water to fix his image. The translucent Kozo on linen allows viewers to see through to the bright colors beneath only while looking head-on at the artwork, while from a side view the vibrant colors disappear leaving only the blue visible. Forde is making statements on the effect of light and color under direct and peripheral vision, questioning whether we see things more clearly through direct gaze or from the corner of our eyes. Metaphorically he relates these concepts to epic poems and histories that are in the center or on the margins, and what happens to our understanding of identity when we view peripheral histories from a central point of view and centered histories through peripheral vision. “I am drawn forward, guided only by my hand, this is called Pathing: clearing a way where there was none before, or a way that has long since been overgrown by time and nature. My ekphrasis poem offers direction toward the path of my thinking for this exhibition:”
“Water is your name and the Sky is your body”
Sea sage
Healing in the depths
Of the sky above
Lead me where the great ones wait
In the eternal sea below
To receive a language of a return to self.
Plunge
Through the mirror of ocean
Deep into outer space
Pathing sea and sky
Floating through
Crystalline portals of
Onyx and sapphire,
Resplendent in a bluer night.
To arrive you must go within.
Lay your head on the ocean floor
facing the gate of heaven.
You’ll find the blue ones down there
Etched in water
Mapping constellations beneath the waves.
ILF. Harlem, 2023.