Impressions Du Novo is a solo exhibition by Wallace Ejoh. Ejoh is a master artist and Signature Gallery chose to showcase him due to the deep impressionistic representations of his fifteen figures and portraitures. He has come to indulge in the application of limited colours, a transition he confessed came to him naturally. As he wound up his exhibition recently, Ejoh told Edozie Udeze in a chat that it took him twenty-one years to have his first solo show. He states why and what Du Novo stands for.
IMPRESSIONS Du Novo which opened last month at the Signature Gallery, Lagos, was the first of its kind in the history of solo exhibitions in Nigeria. Wallace Ejoh, the exhibitor is no doubt an old horse in the visual art business in Nigeria. He has come a long way indeed. For a long time, close watchers of events in the contemporary art scene in Nigeria, waited for his solo exhibition. And when it finally came, it came with a bang. Ejoh was at his best, with art pieces – mainly female figures, that showed an artist in tune with the realities of contemporary images and portraitures around him.
Ejoh said “my name is Wallace Ejoh, a visual artist, indeed a painter. Yes, Impressions Du Novo is a mixture of English and Latin. It is done on purpose and it means afresh. Du Novo means afresh. So in other words, what I have here is impressions revisited or re-presented afresh. So it is an exhibition of me rebranding, renewed. I have just rebranded with these new set of works you see here on display. For me, it is a moment of a new era in my artistic exploits and experiments”.
Ejoh had many female figures, bold, attractive and exquisite, almost beckoning on you to touch them. The figures formed part of his rebranded works, his recourse to this new era of self-rediscovery. He said: “The nude paintings here are not in any way erotic. No, they are not. The areas of the works that would have aroused anyone in the works are covered. However when you go to some parts of Africa, some women still leave their breasts open. They only cover their private parts. I used some female figures, apart from portraitures, to show that the African woman is always beautiful. Yes. But beauty here goes beyond facial adornment, beyond looks”.
He explained further: “Without clothing, the African woman is beautiful, from head to toe. To remove the clothes is to show that our ladies are beautiful whether they wear clothes or not. If you want to really know if a woman is beautiful, meet her early in the morning without a make-up. Therefore part of what I show in these images, are the features that apparently define the African lady. I have gone into it because, it also defines part of Impressions Du Novo, a new Wallace Ejoh’s art pieces. Then beauty without artificial adornment is what I mean and what I try to portray in all the female figures I have here”.
Ejoh is an artist who is unabashedly in love with women. “Yes, I have always been surrounded by women. Let me ask you: ‘is it better to be surrounded by fellow men? Wouldn’t people brand me gay? I do not dislike women. I do not like them because of sexual pleasures. No. It is so because women are able to model. Any kind of pose you want from them they can give it to you. Mostly, I paint models. At times too, I paint male figures. But for this exhibition and some I’d done before, I’ve had more of female figures. It gives me joy, professional satisfaction to do so”.
So, Impressions Du Novo is beauty in its totality, an all-embracing beauty orchestrated to portray and celebrate the undiluted African beauty. It is meant to see all the facial contours and the bodily beautiful gifts God has endowed black women with. You often hear black is beautiful. Yes, you can only appreciate this the more through the art pieces of Ejoh. In about fifteen classically packaged works, he was able to showcase different women in diverse beautiful postures. Some are tempting, very irresistible to the eyes. Some truly came out bold enough to justify why Ejoh has somewhat become too engrossed in verbose women figures. However, they all showed how he has come to economise colours to bring out this new branding, this fantastic Du Novo.
He said “For a long time, I mentored students from diverse areas and schools. Today, I have chosen to take the bull by the horn by embarking on this solo show. Even though I have been involved in so many group shows, this is my first solo. It took me this long, because almost all my career life, I had had to help students grow in the art. The figures here are not imaginative images. I work with models most of the time. So, before I knew it, I realized that the fifteen works I have here for this show are all female. It was never pre-planned. It is not deliberate”.
Ejoh was gregarious about his rebranded exploits. As he moved away from a noisy place of abode in Lagos to Ikorodu, more serene and isolated he discovered that his level of concentration to paint more, to devote more time to his work, had equally become higher. With ample time at his disposal, he began to fire on. Before long, he had got enough works to do a solo. Not only that these works are peculiar, Ejoh drifted into the usage of impressions that appeal to the senses. He no longer splashed colours recklessly. Limited colours, with enough impressions in the background became part of his Du Novo habit.
No doubt, beautiful portraitures, blended with the appropriate colours often dominate the beauty of a collection. Ejoh knows this hence he resorted to “my mastery of colours has been there over the years. This move I have made now is natural in one’s professional journey. You cannot continue to do the same thing all over”. From multi-colours, he has moved over to the usage of limited application of colours. “At times change comes in the life of an artist. Sometimes it is not planned; it just comes and you embrace it and move on. I used to tell my students; do not bring in black colour into your palette. It worked for me. I was also told not to bring black into my work. But I noticed I could not do without it. I started removing strong, brilliant colours from my palette.
“When you look at my works you could notice that if I did not master the application of colours very well, the transition wouldn’t have been easy and possible. I have learnt some things from the younger ones also, those I have taken time to teach all these years. Today they still need my attention but I cannot have time for them as it used to be. I have devoted more time now to do more paintings in my studio in Ikorodu, Lagos.
“I have not lost what I was doing before. It is only that this move is necessary. I have used 21 years of my career to equip others, to train, to indoctrinate. It is now time for me to face this work squarely, hence this solo show”. Trained at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Ejoh was for many years synonymous with the Universal Studios of Art (USA) Iganmu, Lagos. From there he moved to Apapa. But the distractions were unprecedented, hence he moved to Ikorodu. There he erected his own studios, quiet, serene and conducive to pay accelerated attention to paintings. Within this short period of time, he got involved in some commissioned works. He also decided it was time to go bold to have his first solo show ever. You see, the beauty of a master artist lies in the number of solo shows he has been able to pull off. This is why Wallace Ejoh in excited, with the full fulfillment of an artist who has climaxed his career with long time dream – the dream of having a solo exhibition. Indeed, the eagle has landed.
So now that he has left teaching and mentoring, his mastery of the art has become more embossed. Ejoh misses them often. But it is now time for more Impressions Du Novo. Now it is time for his collectors to have more of his works. Even as he painted before and sold out, it is now time to keep more works for subsequent solos. “Even though some of the students still call me on phone, I keep telling them to hold on still. I need to have more concentration for my work”.
Having been exhibited b y the Signature, one gallery that loves exceptional art pieces, Ejoh has indeed proved that he is truly a master. He is an artist in his own special groove.