Daniel Arnan Quarshie - Sympathetic Magic: Gallery III, Accra
Past exhibition
Overview
Gallery 1957 is proud to present Daniel Arnan Quarshie’s first solo exhibition Sympathetic Magic; a title that reveals all together in its dichotomy the unprecedented sense of dramatic beauty captured in Quarshie’s artworks. In Sympathy is Quarshie’s melancholic portrait of intimacy and celebration of life. His elaboration of old family albums narrates the tenderness of people’s lives passing through time and space, through marriages, religious events and other striking Ghanaian moments of family and ceremonial gatherings. In The Magical is the artist’s attempt to transform these memories into monuments. To convey, through his drawings, a cathartic experience of revival, of bringing back who was once lost and is to be found again. Quarshie’s artworks immortalise memories by creating a suspended space that holds together yesterday with today and tomorrow. These images of time are thickened in concept by a layering of past present and future merged over the surface through a signature use of dramatic chiaroscuro rendered in a hyper-contemporary use of Charcoal. Charcoal -the artist’s best friend and space for his constant experimentation- breathes in the work a life of its own, shines in the work a light of his own.
Text by Angelica Litta Modignani
Installation Views
