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Lot Essay
A thrilling symphony of light and colour, spun from the depths of the artist’s imagination, Astray captures the dawn of Jadé Fadojutimi’s celebrated abstract language. Opulent strains of pink, purple and deep midnight blue collide with fiery red and orange tones, backlit by a luminous pale peach. Shapes form and dissolve, invoking leaves and canopies; lines twist and tangle in impenetrable knots. Painted in 2017—the year that Fadojutimi graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art—and acquired by the present owner shortly afterwards, the work witnesses the birth of one of today’s most exciting painterly practices. Over the last five years she has taken her place at the forefront of her generation, drawing inspiration from anime, fashion and childhood memories in pursuit of her greatest love: colour. The youngest artist featured in the Tate’s permanent collection, Fadojutimi completed her first major institutional solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, in April, and participated in the 2022 Venice Biennale to great acclaim. This Autumn she will mount a solo exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield, where another of her works is held.
Fadojutimi’s early influences were not primarily art historical. Korean dramas, Japanese subculture, video game soundtracks, clothes and soft toys filled her childhood bedroom in London, and fired her youthful imagination. Later, as a student at the Slade School of Art and subsequently the Royal College, she began to develop an appreciation for other painters: David Hockney, Marc Chagall, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse were among those she admired, along with contemporary artists including Phoebe Unwin, Laura Owens and Amy Sillman. Uniting many of these figures was their multi-sensory approach to painting, with sound, touch, speed and other phenomena informing their handling of pigment. Fadojutimi, too, seeks to explore colour in similarly complex terms, using writing as well as paint to dig deep into her emotional responses. ‘I think we can translate a lot of moods into colour, and see it literally, too’, she explains. ‘… We are all colours that are constantly fluctuating, we change every day, we change every minute … I don’t want to use colour literally, but it’s more of a synaesthesia of sorts’ (J. Fadojutimi, quoted in K. Hessel, ‘ 27-Year-Old Painter Jadé Fadojutimi Is In A League Of Her Own’, Vogue, 31 August 2020).
In this regard, works such as Astray are deeply personal expressions. Working alone in her studio, often late at night, Fadojutimi engages in quiet dialogue with her own sensory world. Surrounding herself with props—from houseplants and furniture to childhood toys—she listens carefully to shifts in mood and feeling as she paints, and watches as forms, textures and colours take on new dimensions in the process. For Fadojutimi, these elements evolve like characters in a story: ‘I completely bathe in the conversations between colour, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances’, she explains (J. Fadojutimi, quoted in D. Trigg, ‘Jadé Fadojutimi—interview’, Studio International, 26 April 2021). The present work’s title Astray captures something of this dynamic, conjuring the way in which the artist’s mind and brush wander in tandem, leading each other down new and unknown paths. We as viewers, too, are drawn into the process, our eyes perpetually diverted within the work’s prismatic depths.
Fadojutimi’s early influences were not primarily art historical. Korean dramas, Japanese subculture, video game soundtracks, clothes and soft toys filled her childhood bedroom in London, and fired her youthful imagination. Later, as a student at the Slade School of Art and subsequently the Royal College, she began to develop an appreciation for other painters: David Hockney, Marc Chagall, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse were among those she admired, along with contemporary artists including Phoebe Unwin, Laura Owens and Amy Sillman. Uniting many of these figures was their multi-sensory approach to painting, with sound, touch, speed and other phenomena informing their handling of pigment. Fadojutimi, too, seeks to explore colour in similarly complex terms, using writing as well as paint to dig deep into her emotional responses. ‘I think we can translate a lot of moods into colour, and see it literally, too’, she explains. ‘… We are all colours that are constantly fluctuating, we change every day, we change every minute … I don’t want to use colour literally, but it’s more of a synaesthesia of sorts’ (J. Fadojutimi, quoted in K. Hessel, ‘ 27-Year-Old Painter Jadé Fadojutimi Is In A League Of Her Own’, Vogue, 31 August 2020).
In this regard, works such as Astray are deeply personal expressions. Working alone in her studio, often late at night, Fadojutimi engages in quiet dialogue with her own sensory world. Surrounding herself with props—from houseplants and furniture to childhood toys—she listens carefully to shifts in mood and feeling as she paints, and watches as forms, textures and colours take on new dimensions in the process. For Fadojutimi, these elements evolve like characters in a story: ‘I completely bathe in the conversations between colour, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances’, she explains (J. Fadojutimi, quoted in D. Trigg, ‘Jadé Fadojutimi—interview’, Studio International, 26 April 2021). The present work’s title Astray captures something of this dynamic, conjuring the way in which the artist’s mind and brush wander in tandem, leading each other down new and unknown paths. We as viewers, too, are drawn into the process, our eyes perpetually diverted within the work’s prismatic depths.