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Lot Essay
Included in Jadé Fadojutimi’s landmark exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Miami in 2021—her solo museum debut—The Woven Warped Garden of Ponder is an exquisite painting dating from a pivotal moment in her career. A kaleidoscopic spectrum of blue and green tones shimmers across the three-metre-wide canvas, flickering from teal, violet and aquamarine to jade, eau de nil and pale yellow. Vibrant flashes of pink, red and orange gleam through the texture; light and shadow undulate across the surface. Using both oil and acrylic, Fadojutimi oscillates between rich, sweeping gestures, rapid linear strokes and translucent dabs of colour. It is dazzling spectacle, calling to mind a vision of flowers and foliage seen through a stained glass window. In a recent interview, Melanie Vandenbrouck, Chief Curator at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, singled it out as her favourite painting. It is fresh, vibrant and intoxicating, capturing the moment that Fadojutimi began to take her place on the international stage.
Born and raised in London, Fadojutimi studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She has risen to extraordinary critical acclaim over the past seven years: in 2021 she became the youngest artist to enter the Tate’s collection, and made her Venice Biennale debut the following year. Though her paintings sing with life, movement and energy, Fadojutimi’s process is one of quiet, deeply personal contemplation. As a child, she developed a powerful love of colour, informed by eclectic interests in fashion, Japanese anime and video games. The lessons of art history did not feature heavily during her youth, and her understanding of tone, space and pattern was cultivated from first principles. In her studio, Fadojutimi seeks to recreate the sanctity of her childhood bedroom, surrounding herself with clothes, old soft toys and fragments of her own writings. Frequently working late at night, she pays close attention to her innermost thoughts and feelings, allowing them to guide her hand intuitively across the canvas. She draws much of her inspiration from the natural world, describing her paintings as 'environments' that she builds up through complex techniques of gridding and layering.
In her commentary on the present work, Vandenbrouck hails Fadojutimi’s ‘exuberance of colours, expressive brushstrokes and animated textures’. ‘Each of her canvases carries such life, depth and poetic resonance, her visual language mirrored by her evocative word-smithing’, she writes. ‘They are open, too: to interpretation and emotional response, changing depending on the light, the day’s mood, a soundtrack. I could lose myself in this piece, with its luscious greens and liquid blues punctuated by delicious reds, pinks and oranges. The artist alternates skin-like, translucent layers of paint with generous, concentrated build-ups of matter—true to the contrasting qualities of acrylic and oil’ (M. Vandenbrouck, quoted in C. Mullins, ‘My Favourite Painting: Melanie Vandenbrouck’, Country Life, 11 December 2023). There are glimpses, too, of some of the painters whom Fadojutimi came to admire during her time at art school: Amy Sillman, David Hockney, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse. Echoes of Vincent van Gogh and Gustave Klimt linger in the painting’s depths. Ultimately, however, it remains a powerful and singular expression of her own interior landscape, saturated with light, warmth and beauty.
Born and raised in London, Fadojutimi studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She has risen to extraordinary critical acclaim over the past seven years: in 2021 she became the youngest artist to enter the Tate’s collection, and made her Venice Biennale debut the following year. Though her paintings sing with life, movement and energy, Fadojutimi’s process is one of quiet, deeply personal contemplation. As a child, she developed a powerful love of colour, informed by eclectic interests in fashion, Japanese anime and video games. The lessons of art history did not feature heavily during her youth, and her understanding of tone, space and pattern was cultivated from first principles. In her studio, Fadojutimi seeks to recreate the sanctity of her childhood bedroom, surrounding herself with clothes, old soft toys and fragments of her own writings. Frequently working late at night, she pays close attention to her innermost thoughts and feelings, allowing them to guide her hand intuitively across the canvas. She draws much of her inspiration from the natural world, describing her paintings as 'environments' that she builds up through complex techniques of gridding and layering.
In her commentary on the present work, Vandenbrouck hails Fadojutimi’s ‘exuberance of colours, expressive brushstrokes and animated textures’. ‘Each of her canvases carries such life, depth and poetic resonance, her visual language mirrored by her evocative word-smithing’, she writes. ‘They are open, too: to interpretation and emotional response, changing depending on the light, the day’s mood, a soundtrack. I could lose myself in this piece, with its luscious greens and liquid blues punctuated by delicious reds, pinks and oranges. The artist alternates skin-like, translucent layers of paint with generous, concentrated build-ups of matter—true to the contrasting qualities of acrylic and oil’ (M. Vandenbrouck, quoted in C. Mullins, ‘My Favourite Painting: Melanie Vandenbrouck’, Country Life, 11 December 2023). There are glimpses, too, of some of the painters whom Fadojutimi came to admire during her time at art school: Amy Sillman, David Hockney, Claude Monet and Henri Matisse. Echoes of Vincent van Gogh and Gustave Klimt linger in the painting’s depths. Ultimately, however, it remains a powerful and singular expression of her own interior landscape, saturated with light, warmth and beauty.