Gozié Ojini: Careworn

Silke Lindner is excited to announce Careworn, Gozié Ojini’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. In an installation of sculptural interventions, Ojini transforms and alters familiar objects, diverting their functions into new formal configurations.

A series of floor sculptures composed of brown folding chairs, ubiquitous and anonymous, indexes the body ergonomically and metaphorically. Legs, backs and seats are dissected, and restructured. The once functional objects, commonly used for temporary gatherings and occasions, resist being instrumentalized. Conjoined into permanent objects of new shapes, they refuse their binary states of being open or closed, of leaning against the wall or being put to use. 

Mat boards scattered throughout the space bare traces of repeated use and acidity transferred from the process of heating and flattening thousands of artworks and photographs. Their cutouts – irregularly spaced and arranged – are left empty. Framing absence rather than photos, memories or people, Ojini’s acts of subtraction ask questions only to be left unanswered. Creating blank spaces that the mind wants to fill, he shifts focus away from recognition to form and objects that occupy spaces of ambiguity.

Varying in color, patina and degree of wear, two rows of baseballs, partly dissected and arranged in a gradient from dark to light, bear the traces of repeated use and handling. Lined up against the wall on the gallery’s floor, they indicate progression of time and material memory.   

Withholding answers and conclusions, Ojini’s objects ask the viewer to slow down and suggest a tempo that’s led by what’s at hand. Through refusal, they allow uncertainty to linger and suggest a meditation on the materiality and anonymity of discarded objects.