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Floating City: Addis Gezehagn

Past exhibition
24 June - 23 July 2022 London Gallery
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Overview
Floating City, XXVI, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 148 x 230 cm
Floating City, XXVI, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 148 x 230 cm

 Addis Fine Art is pleased to announce the first European solo show by Addis Gezehagn, opening at our London gallery in June, 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 finalise 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 last. The effect is a dizzying landscape of colour variations and unique textures, created by the intentional cracking 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 indistinguishable medlies 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 recognizable objects from the urban landscape begin to reveal themselves. A clothing line draped with laundry floats adrift, while 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 reside 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 The organic interactions and social relations facilitated by their previous way of living have been replaced by a sense of impersonality, imposed by the coldness of these new dwellings.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 visual archive of what will soon be lost to the relentless pursuit of modernity.

 

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Works
  • Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXVI, 2022
    Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXVI, 2022
  • Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXV, 2021
    Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXV, 2021
  • Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXVII, 2021
    Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXVII, 2021
  • Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXVIII, 2022
    Addis Gezehagn, Floating City XXVIII, 2022
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Publications
  • Addis Gezehagn

    Addis Gezehagn

    Floating City, 2022 Softback 28 pages
    Publisher: Addis Fine Art
    Dimensions: 21 x 14.8 cm
    Read more
Videos
  • Floating City

    Floating City

    Addis Gezehagn Addis Gezehagn discusses the concepts behind his latest work for his solo exhibition, Floating City, at Addis Fine Art, London. Read more

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  • Addis Gezehagn

    Addis Gezehagn

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