Kwesi Botchway - The Sun Must Come Down: The French Protestant Church of London, 8 - 9 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QD

Curated by Azu Nwagbogu, the interdisciplinary experience will take place over one week in the French Protestant Church of London, invoking a sense of fellowship and community with a harmonising performance by London Community Gospel Choir at 7:30pm on the opening night on Monday 7th October.

Renowned for his seamless fusion of French impressionism and African realism that exalts the Black portraiture, Botchway’s poignant yet intense figures emerge from mountainous and mystical vistas. For the artist, the sun is omnipresent: an entity that unifies humanity and our experience of each passing day. His deeper concerns with his immediate environment are underwritten by sunset hues, potent yellows and earth tones which ground us in a universal encounter. Colours, Botchway believes, are characters much like the subjects of his paintings, and so each pigment is chosen with precise and calculated intention.

The spatial undertones are an obvious evolution in Botchway’s approach to composition and in this new body of work, we see a palpable shift in his schematics of the portrait tradition that summons poetic landscapes. Looking at religion through a more humanitarian, less nationalistic lens, Botchway invites his audiences to redefine divinity and reflect upon the duality of art and faith, iconography and identity, and an uncharted ethereal nature.

In Kwesi Botchway’s London solo exhibition The Sun Must Come Down, we witness a captivating blend of the numinous, rapturous, and subversive. Botchway's paintings are esteemed for their exploration of empowered Black subjects within a meta-universe where fantasies and local Ghanaian folktales intertwine with his utopian vision, creating a narrative that transcends reality. With The Sun Must Come Down, Botchway brings this universe into palpable existence, expanding its dimensions. The convergence of these ethereal beings embodies his signature indescribable spiritual universe, but in The Sun Must Come Down the beings journey across the Earth's surface, ascending from the lowest to the highest points.

This cosmic voyage is accompanied by a symphony of song, connecting them through intertwining braids—a natural antenna facilitating communion. The passage from the Earth's surface,  through the troposphere, and into the exosphere carries a profound message of our shared humanity—-we all exist equally under this universe. While works like Marc Chagall's 'Joshua Stops the Sun' (1958) and John Martin's 'Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon' (1816) implore the sun to linger for acts of violence, Botchway commands the sun to descend, beckoning peace and rest, heralding the arrival of a new dawn.

-Excerpt from Curatorial text by Azu Nwagbogu

Exhibition Details:

Opening Times:

Monday 7th October: Opening Reception | 6 - 9pm
Tuesday 8th October: 11am - 7pm
Wednesday 9th October: 11am - 7pm
Thursday 10th October: 11am - 7pm
Friday 11th October: 11am - 7pm
Saturday 12th October: 11am - 6pm

Download the Press Release for the full Curatorial text and for more information.