STEPHEN ABBAN JUNIOR Original Work and An Artist’s Statement

STEPHEN ABBAN JUNIOR | AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT

A short-term memory loss ushered in Stephen Abban Junior’s illustrations on the walls of his mother’s bedroom during his early childhood. Those illustrations were his means of keeping his memories alive and helping recall the thoughts, morals, and values passed on by his parents.

Episodic memories are some of the subjects Abban captures and portrays in his oeuvre, wherein he synchronizes the process of aging and history. As humans advance, there exists the possibility of being metaphorically blindfolded from our history, and going through our lives without a sense of who we are, historically speaking. But human progress should always taste of nature and its history. Abban’s work makes it possible to bridge the gap between nature and its history by linking nature’s elements: soil, the human figure, fibers (here, burlap fabric), and water, all blended with an inorganic element—here, acrylic—to create a visual and psychological sensation of antiqueness in the viewer’s mind.

The formalism of Stephen Abban Junior’s oeuvre is comprised largely of figurative representations which the feminine figure dominates, thereby allotting Fluidity, unclenching and amnesty in his journey through his executions. Abban uses the human body (depicted in varied postures and spaces) metaphorically, as a way to address the pertinent historical narratives that are reticent in contemporary history.