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| El Anatsui's "New World Symphony" (2022) / Courtesy of Barakat Contemporary |
By Park Han-sol
A ferociously glistening sheet of golden light that cascades from the ceiling to the floor becomes an immediate eye dazzler for anyone who sets foot in Barakat Contemporary in central Seoul.
The eight-meter-long resplendent expanse of something ― a painting? A tapestry? A sculpture? ― warrants a closer second look.
It is only then that you will see that the shimmering wall hanging is, in fact, bedecked with thousands of colorful metal scraps all stitched together with copper wire.
But the surprise doesn't end there. The majority of these jangly pieces is printed with legible brand names ― Samanna Foods, Rexton Industries, Chelsea London Dry Gin or New Life Beverages ― indicating their humble origin as once-littered liquor bottle caps.
The installation, titled "New World Symphony," is fashioned by celebrated Ghanaian artist El Anatsui for his second solo show in Korea, "El Anatsui: Day after Night," following his first at the Seoul-based gallery in 2017.
The formidable installation reflects the 78-year-old's latest stage of transforming materials sourced from distilleries in Nigeria, where he has been based for the last four decades, into glinting metallic mosaics now housed in a number of prestigious art institutions worldwide.
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| Ghanaian artist El Anatsui / Courtesy of Barakat Contemporary |
One day in 1998, Anatsui stumbled across a trash bag sitting outside a distillery in the Nigerian town of Nsukka. Instead of disregarding its presence like any other pedestrian, he decided to approach it, soon fishing out a whole batch of aluminum screw caps.
Little did the artist know then that these scraps would become his established idiom ― and eventually earn him the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2015 Venice Biennale.
Aside from being a material that remains in abundant supply, liquor bottle caps are culturally loaded, subtly pointing to international consumerism as well as the history of the European colonization of Africa, Barakat Contemporary director Kaiah Lee said at a recent press preview.
They are also an immensely flexible artistic medium both in terms of palette ― gold, silver, black, yellow and red ― and malleability, as they can be flattened, twisted and assembled into a great number of shapes and patterns.
The finished pieces, which, in part, are like an abstract metallic ode to Ghana's native Kente cloth, can be easily folded up or draped anywhere like a fabric sheet, no matter how monumental and jangly they are.
Another notable characteristic of Anatsui's body of work is that a majority of his pieces are born from a communal approach involving dozens of his studio assistants and apprentices, due to their labor-intensive nature and expansive scale.
"Therefore, there is a large working community formed around the artist. In a way, he is in a position of feeding and providing for many of the villagers there," Lee said.
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| El Anatsui's "Pray All Night G" (2022) / Courtesy of Barakat Contemporary |
In addition to his signature wall-spanning metal mosaics, wooden reliefs as well as monoprints bearing the patterns of multihued bottle caps and wrappers are showcased at the gallery for the first time in Korea.
One of the reliefs, "of Realities and Illusions," recalls the artist's earlier forays into wood panel installations and sculptures that took place before he dove into the world of aluminum screw caps.
"Day after Night" runs through Jan. 29, 2023, at Barakat Contemporary.
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