Addis Gezehagn
Addis Gezehagn Floating City
23 June – 23 July 2022
Addis Gezehagn
Addis Fine Art is pleased to announce the first European solo show by Addis Gezehagn, on view at our London gallery June – July 2022. The works in Floating City are from his eponymous series, which explores the rapidly urbanising environment of Addis Ababa through abstract mixed media paintings.
Gezehagn is known for his labour-intensive assemblage practice. It takes the artist many months to complete each work. Methodically layering cut-outs from locally sourced magazines and newspapers onto his canvases, the artist then applies acrylic paint to create his signature cityscapes. His canvases possess a kaleidoscopic quality, every centimetre of each painting different from the next. The effect is a dizzying landscape of colour variations and unique textures, created by the intentionally broken surface of the collage beneath.
From his Addis Ababa studio, Gezehagn reimagines the city he inhabits. The artist’s Floating City series details the topography of the Ethiopian capital’s cityscape, as if seen from a bird’s eye perspective. Gezehagn uses abstraction to create the illusion of three-dimensional sculptural space, and vertiginous views of urban centres yield to indetemerminate medleys of rooftops and window panes. Doorways now occupy the tops of homes, and entire buildings have been repositioned and deconstructed, reduced to ambiguous cubic forms. On closer inspection, more
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recognizable elements from the urban landscape begin to reveal themselves. A clothing line draped with laundry floats adrift, while images of corrugated iron roofs litter the canvas at sporadic intervals.
There is a tension that permeates Gezehagn’s work, as the artist subtly hints at the social consequences of the incessant desire to urbanise. While impoverished communities in Addis Ababa once lived in ground-level shacks, they are now being uprooted to be resettled in newly built highrise buildings. The organic interactions and social relations facilitated by their previous way of living have been replaced by a sense of impersonality, imposed by the coldness of these new dwellings. Gezehagn’s paintings are more than just a snapshot of the city – rather, they stand as a densely layered visual archive of what will soon be lost to the relentless pursuit of modernity.
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Floating City XXVI, 2022
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
148 × 230 cm
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Floating City XXXIV, 2022
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
162 × 130 cm
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Floating
Acrylic
150
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City XXVII, 2021
and mixed media on canvas
× 170 cm
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Floating City XXV, 2021
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
170 × 140 cm
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Floating City XXIX, 2022
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
170 × 140 cm
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Floating City XXXII, 2022
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
170 × 150 cm
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In 2016, Rakeb Sile and Mesai Haileleul co-founded Addis Fine Art, creating the first white-cube gallery space for modern and contemporary art in Ethiopia. Described as one of the “Most Important Young Galleries in the World” (Artsy 2019), the gallery has since then grown to become one of the leading galleries in Africa, establishing a prominent international platform for artists from the Horn of Africa.
In October 2021, Addis Fine Art London moved into expanded premises in Eastcastle Street, opening a two-storey gallery space in the heart of Fitzrovia. The London gallery programme will encapsulate Addis Fine Art’s commitment to heightened international exposure for, and critical reappraisal of, African art on the world stage. The gallery’s Addis Ababa space will continue to be an incubator for emerging talent, facilitating critical engagement within the local market and encouraging the growth and development of the artworld ecosystem on the continent. The gallery will also serve as a space for artists from the diaspora to return to the continent and share and develop their practice.
Published by Addis Fine Art on the occasion of Addis Gezehagn Floating City
23 June – 23 July 2022
Addis Fine Art
21 Eastcastle Street
London W1W 8DD
© 2022 Addis Fine Art
Credits: Kate Kirby
Ikenna Malbert
All images © 2022 Addis Gezehagn
Photography by Lucy Emms
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Addis Fine Art
Designed by Lucy Harbut
Printed by Dayfold
