Beauty in production processes: the works of Olu Oguibe on display at the Giampaolo Abbondio Gallery in Milan, Italy

From Oct. 9, 2019, to Jan. 15, 2020, Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio, a new gallery in Milan born out of the many years of experience of Galleria Pack (one of the most dynamic names on the Milan scene), is hosting a solo exhibition by African artist Olu Oguibe (Aba, 1964), entitled Cuba Project. It is a work born and designed in Cuba, executed with the use of waste materials, scraps of production processes reconfigured as works of art that allude to the beauty that underlies the process of production and the hands and souls that make the production of objects possible. A story that also speaks of respect for the work of the workers. Twenty-five pieces make up the group of works and are the result of several weeks spent in early 2019 by Oguibe at the “Noel Fernández” steel mill in Matanzas, Cuba.

“I visited the factory for the first time in December 2018 in the company of Cuban artist Marìa Magdalena Campos-Pons,” Oguibe says, “deciding to go back there almost immediately to work with the metal production waste that ingenere is thrown away or destined to be recycled. Steel is a medium I have not used much in the past, and working in the factory gave me the opportunity to explore the material without the difficulty of working with it. I did not intend to ”build“ objects, but rather to follow the material as it presented itself and whatever it suggested, which in my opinion is a very liberating way to create. Over a period of about nine days my translator, Mr. Matos, and I scoured the factory floors for scrap metal, which we then assembled in a large storage area of the facility. In addition to form, which was my primary focus, I was also interested in the broad spectrum of color possibilities in industrial steel that require no further intervention. The range of rust is also fascinating, and certainly suggests that the monochromatic tendency of much minimalist sculpture is perhaps mannerist and unnecessary. This body of work is significant in many ways. Although it does not represent an entirely new direction in my practice, this is, nevertheless, the first time I have assembled such a large group of sculptures or sculptural installations into a single project, and as noted above, it is certainly my most significant venture with steel. The work can be viewed in many different ways; minimalist sculpture, creative recovery of ’poor’ materials, or an exercise in the archaeology of work. Everything still revolves around the powerful resonance of form, but the objects will forever document a unique moment in the history of industrial labor in late revolutionary Cuba.”

Olu Oguibe, a Nigerian born in 1964, is one of the most recognized African artists on the contemporary scene. Not only that, he is also an art historian (specializing in contemporary African art) and curator: after his PhD at the University of London, he has exhibited in various international contexts, from the Whitechapel in London to the Kunsthalle in Malmoe, from the Japanese Institute of Contemporary Art in Tokyo to the Milan Triennale, from the Castello di Rivoli to the Whitney Museum in New York. He also participated in the Venice Biennale in 2007, Documenta 14 in Kassel in 2017, the Shanghai Biennale in 2011 and the Busan Biennale in 2004.

Information about the exhibition can be found on the Giampaolo Abbondio Gallery website.

Pictured: Olu Oguibe, Form with Steel and Wood (2019; steel, waste material). Courtesy the artist and Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio

Beauty in production processes: the works of Olu Oguibe on display at the Giampaolo Abbondio Gallery in Milan, Italy

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