Kayode Ojo

Balice Hertling is pleased to present Betrayal, Kayode Ojo’s first exhibition at the gallery.

American artist Kayode Ojo was born in 1990 and lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 2012. In 2018, he has had group shows at Paula Cooper gallery in New York, Salon 94 Freemans in New York and Balice Hertling in Paris. In 2018, he has had a solo show at And Now in Dallas and is going to open solo exhibitions at New York’s Martos gallery and at Sweetwater in Berlin.

Kayode Ojo’s work filters different aspects of contemporary life by exploring mass produced objects as well as popular culture, advertising strategies and cinema. He often employs antiquated forms to produce dramatic effect: exaggerated traditional gender roles, formal wear, modernist furniture, aspirational apparel and design objects.

For this exhibition, following the logic of the practice of stage-to-film adaptation, Ojo takes inspiration from two movies : Betrayal, the 1983 film adaptation of Harold Pinter's play starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge and the movie By the Sea from 2015.

Both films dwell on the concept of a double agent operating a romantic relationship. A contract between two people clandestinely expanded to be negotiated amongst four.

In the exhibition Ojo presents six sculptures made from ready-mades such as garments, jewelry or furniture, three paintings and a video. The works either directly reference elements in the films or loosely take on the mood.