TIFFANIE DELUNE
& KAYE FREEMAN

Band of Vices (Los Angeles, CA) is pleased to present their first exhibition of 2021, aptly entitled In the Midst of All That Is featuring the artwork of Tiffanie Delune and Kaye Freeman. The title of the exhibition suggests a direct conversation with our current global challenges in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic and other social, political and economic ills. Both artists insist on searching for the silver-lining in these fraught times, mainly through the use of vibrant color palettes that are invoked through their real and imagined cityscapes and dreamscapes. These artists imbue their paintings with the hope that this uncertain future that we are living through will bring kinder days ahead for humankind. 

Tiffanie Delune's color acuity irradiates in her new paintings. Her oeuvre sits at a nexus of figuration and abstraction with an emphasis on the latter. Her work evokes a sense of wonder and amazement as she creates characters with energy that the world must recognize. In Wanderlust (2020), for example, this work is composed of a startling juxtaposition of a Black female character in a powerful white ensemble who is seemingly giving praise with her hands held high to the beauty of the images of the natural world that is before her. This character plays beautifully against a multi-layered, multi-patterned, cornucopia of colors of birds, trees, vegetation and mountains. Ms. Delune’s imagery speaks to creating beauty, cultural identity and the complexities of people of the Motherland and a direct connection to nature. 

Expanding from an initial focus on personal trauma and childhood experiences, her practice is instinctively embarking on a wondering wandering. She weaves apparitions in dreams and travel recollections with symbols of her mixed-race family, hints of femininity and flux of spirituality. Navigating between her shadow self and full of light, movement and energy forms, Tiffanie is interested in the magic of storytelling that engages conversations and evokes emotions. 

Her mixed-race background is one that is so indicative of our continuing emerging globality. Paris-born and of Belgo-Congolese heritage, Ms. Delune lives and works in London and has exhibited in London, Paris, Lagos and Los Angeles. Themes such as family, womanhood, identity and sexuality are embedded in her art practice. Ms. Delune is wont to use eclectic yet unusual combinations of materials in her paintings such as acrylic, oil pastels, sewing thread, a hair net, golden pins, glitter, sand, charcoal gold & metallic leaf, mixed papers on stretched cotton canvas, all in an effort to search for a better visual understanding of the complicated world in which we find ourselves. Her work is imbued with an incredible amount of joy and fulfillment and she says that embedded are "gentle reminders to live intentionally and mindfully."     

Self-taught, Ms. Delune has fully emerged herself into her practice with daily rituals and creative challenges, her work has been featured on Forbes, BBC Radio London, Contemporary And, The Financial Times and Artsy; and is held in the permanent collection of the Foundation Gandur pour l’Art in Geneva, Switzerland as well as the New York – Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns. Recent solo shows of hers include Seeds of Light, Ed Cross Fine Art, London (2020) Metamorphosis, Someth1ng Gallery, London (2019) and Coloriosity at 16/16, Lagos (2018). Other highlights include works featured in ARTX Lagos, 2020, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Somerset House, London (2019) and PIASA’s Contemporary African Art Auction, Paris (2019).

Kaye Freeman is a contemporary artist who is bold, confident & unapologetic in her artistic themes and approach. In this recent body of work, she has become inspired with reimagining cityscapes, bridges, water tanks, skyscrapers, etc, as they have caught her vivid imagination in the time of the Covid-19 crisis. In this series of Freeman paintings, in Vernon (2020), she has centered the framework of Los Angeles as her theme in the time of Covid-19. How is the infrastructure of the city coping as a living organism with this dilemma as its humans struggle to find a way back to something resembling normalcy? These works are about a colorful interpretation of Los Angeles's grids and networks, its streets and skyscrapers, towers and cranes, apartment buildings and ceiling fans, the Vernon water tanks being watched by pigeons. What is the color spectrum like for pigeons, she ponders?

Although she calls Los Angeles home, one can see the strong influence of her travels and studies in Hong Kong and Melbourne, Australia. Ms. Freeman sees the virus as akin to Godzilla “bearing down on the city” and envisions the city as a living organism that is breathing, coughing, belching, screaming, adjusting itself to possible impending doom or salvation. There is a wonderful fluidity that she creates in her work in order to make unusual connections. She seeks to find living organism connections in inanimate objects. There are no people in these images, yet there is still life happening amid the darkness in search of the light. She gives us a knowing yet intimate look into how her beloved city Los Angeles has become ground zero to the pandemic.

One aspect that jumps out at you immediately is Ms. Freeman’s intense intellect and wide-ranging influences. Her erudite knowledge of art history serves as a refreshing undergird to her compositions. Many of her paintings and drawings embody the universal language of such artists as Kandinsky and others associated with the Bauhaus – a language which encouraged artistic development within the framework of line, form, geometry and structure.

Ms. Freeman’s large works can be described as “colossal daring-scapes” as she has become known to create monumental artworks such as The Seven Winds (2019) measuring 10 feet by 29 feet (304.8 cm x 884 cm), which was shown in a recent exhibition at The Museum of Art & History in Lancaster, CA. Kaye Freeman has also exhibited at the Frankston Arts Center, Victoria, Australia; Wangaratta Art Space, Victoria, Australia; Wodonga Art Space, Victoria, Australia.

Brought together then, there is a palpable simpatico that exists between the work of Tiffanie Delune and Kaye Freeman, a synergy that can be described as being radiant and readily intelligible. In the Midst of All That Is shows that both artists insist on stressing that humans must take better care of our planet and have more respect for nature, aspects which give their compositions an added emotional sense of urgency.

In the Gallery Annex we are pleased to introduce the contemporary artist REWA.  She is known to delve into the traditions of her Igbo culture in such series as The Pantheon and Onicha Ado N’Idu and has created an original body of work which is deeply rooted in specific cultural references. In The Council I (2020), REWA has portrayed three well-dressed African women standing together in their finest patterned garments as a community. These women understand that holding a community together requires care, respect, self-reflection and reciprocity, they are presenting themselves as a unit, a collective. She places African women at the center of her inquiry as it relates to their geographies, whether those are real, imagined or through lived experiences.

Working between Lagos, London and Johannesburg, REWA’s preferred medium of acrylics and ink on canvas provide the immediacy, proximity and transparency to express her most personal experiences and influences. 

In her young career, REWA has already shown in prestigious museums such as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn, New York and the National Museum of Nigeria as part of the Art Dubai Fair 2020.