After 13 years break from public exhibition, Victor Butler, a self-taught leading Ghanaian artist, brings to Nigeria for the first time the breadth of his surrealist style, which celebrates relationships on the personal, family and community level. The exhibition Nuanced Whisperings of the Soul, which opened at Temple Muse last Thursday, will run till today and open at Art X Lagos Fair Victoria Island, Lagos.
The exhibition was curated by Founder and Artistic Director, SMO Contemporary Art, Sandra Mbanefo Obiago and sponsored by Access Bank and Veuve Clicquot.
Butler, who has exhibited in Canada, England, France and the United States is happy to exhibit in Nigeria for the first time. “When I have international exhibitions, there are three countries that are my biggest collectors; the Netherlands, Switzerland and Nigeria are my biggest collectors. These exhibitions were held outside Africa and Nigerians do ask me when am I coming to exhibit in Nigeria?”
Butler, whose philosophical approach to life is evident in his surrealist style and subject matter, produced 23 paintings on canvas and two prints were on show. These displayed his multi-layered landscapes of many perceptive, subtly referencing traditional narratives in surreal spaces influenced by natural history as well as his mathematics and science background.
His paintings speak to the soul and identity of African communities as they draw on ancestral roots within futuristic mindscapes that reference cultural identity and traditions as a need to preserve and conserve the natural world.
In Mother, Daughter, his art showed a surrealistic painting of a mother and her young child in a cuddling intimate form that explains that the role ‘motherliness’ is a certain skill set. “As Butler puts it ‘being a mother is not just raising a child, it is a conscious effort to pass information to a child.”
Butler’s Interrupted is a subtle dynamics within a group of six women dressed identically, casting questioning looks in the same direction as if disturbed in mid-sentence. Unlike Witnesses, which showed abstract sea of faces with interwoven eyes, each staring on the same scene but with different interpretations, looks and depth of reasoning, while Shelter (111) A Figure with a Book depicts an abstract image holding a book and seated in between two shadows of light with the suggestion that book illuminates the mind positively in ways unimaginable.
On the white walls of Temple Muse, Butler’s oeuvres captures the subtle power struggle in different scenes and groups, through nuanced expression revealing the intricacies and complexity in people’s interpretation of the same thing. His poetic interpretation of the world in works like Guardians of the Night, Volunteer and The Lure of the Moon 1 is deeply rooted in his profound understanding of how community and culture are inextricably linked with science, the natural world and technology.
In his statement, Butler said there was peculiarity of objectivity and subjectivity within the mind and soul of the community, which he explores on each canvas with oil that took eight months to dry.
Obiago said: “We are excited to showcase Victor Butler’s work for the first time in Nigeria adding that the complexity, sophistication and subtle depth of Bulter’s art definitely sets him apart as an African Master. Director of Temple Muse Mr. Avinash Wadhwani said Butler’s fantastic art also references the evolution of African design in a very futuristic way.
Butler studied medicine and worked as an auto mechanic, information technology and furniture design. He was drawn to art while growing up seeing people who produced creative arts.
