16 December 2021 – 12 March 2022
Seduced By The
Charms of A Mistake
Al Hassan Issah
Al Hassan Issah’s works extend the idea of painting. They interrogate paintings beyond their pictureness and flatness. Using painting as an entry point, the works extend and collapse into the realms of design, sculpture, architecture, metalmaking and the like. What could painting be? What is the potential of painting to both redeem its blind spots and to expand on its vision? How could painting engineer other things? For example, how could painting create space as opposed to occupying space? What could painting do in directing encounters and theatricality?
The title of the present show is an allusion to Late Night Jazz’s 2019 music off the 1,000 Choices Can't Be Wrong album. Among other things, two points stand out. The electronic beat seems like a collage of soundscape taken from different spaces. It feels as though you might have encountered strands of the sound somewhere. In the background, the emerging sound is like something is being cut with an industrial machine. It flashes and vanishes. Then almost 3 minutes into the music, the background and foreground merge and a flute-like sound starts and files the listener out of the piece.
Space is something that Issah as an artist is keenly interested in and studies actively. Using Kumase, the Asante regional capital, and other urban spaces, the artist makes sketches and photographs of what he will ordinarily do and see. This is where the artist’s interests in material cultures unfold. He finds inspiration in colours and forms in the city’s object culture such as finishings of metal pots (that sit on top of makeshift kiosks), looming gate grills, burglar bars, billboard signages, windows and flags. From his immediate living environment, he finds uses in henna and posters.
The title of the present show is an allusion to Late Night Jazz’s 2019 music off the 1,000 Choices Can't Be Wrong album. Among other things, two points stand out. The electronic beat seems like a collage of soundscape taken from different spaces. It feels as though you might have encountered strands of the sound somewhere. In the background, the emerging sound is like something is being cut with an industrial machine. It flashes and vanishes. Then almost 3 minutes into the music, the background and foreground merge and a flute-like sound starts and files the listener out of the piece.
Space is something that Issah as an artist is keenly interested in and studies actively. Using Kumase, the Asante regional capital, and other urban spaces, the artist makes sketches and photographs of what he will ordinarily do and see. This is where the artist’s interests in material cultures unfold. He finds inspiration in colours and forms in the city’s object culture such as finishings of metal pots (that sit on top of makeshift kiosks), looming gate grills, burglar bars, billboard signages, windows and flags. From his immediate living environment, he finds uses in henna and posters.
If we are to believe Marxist spatial theorists, cities, as spatial entities, are both symptoms and producers of social relations. Writing as an introduction to his book Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism, Professor Ato Quayson asserts that space is an organising principle. Taking the two together, we are led to ask: what are the social relations and organisation, and historical antecedents that produce the object culture that the artist is interested in?
In 1817, British writer Thomas Edward Bowdich traveled to Kumasi to negotiate a peace treaty on behalf of the African Company of Merchants. A year later, he published a book1 in which he said that there were nine entries/exits to and from Kumasi. Out of the nine roads, four led towards the north of Kumasi. At the apex of its imperial power, Kumase became a cosmopolitan space with a heterogenous ethnic composition.
The sin of the empire opened Kumase up to many influences and disrupted social composition. Maryse Condé speculates in her novel Segu that Mande mercenaries joined the Asante army. In the 19th century, for example, the Muslims (distinct from Asante nkramo (Muslims)) were formally incorporated into Asante polity and placed under Nsumankwaahene, the spiritual adviser to Asantehene. It is these engagements, interactions, encounters, and influences of social relations that produced what artist and art historian Atta Kwami has called ‘visual language’ available to the ‘Kumasi realists’.
In 1817, British writer Thomas Edward Bowdich traveled to Kumasi to negotiate a peace treaty on behalf of the African Company of Merchants. A year later, he published a book1 in which he said that there were nine entries/exits to and from Kumasi. Out of the nine roads, four led towards the north of Kumasi. At the apex of its imperial power, Kumase became a cosmopolitan space with a heterogenous ethnic composition.
The sin of the empire opened Kumase up to many influences and disrupted social composition. Maryse Condé speculates in her novel Segu that Mande mercenaries joined the Asante army. In the 19th century, for example, the Muslims (distinct from Asante nkramo (Muslims)) were formally incorporated into Asante polity and placed under Nsumankwaahene, the spiritual adviser to Asantehene. It is these engagements, interactions, encounters, and influences of social relations that produced what artist and art historian Atta Kwami has called ‘visual language’ available to the ‘Kumasi realists’.
Two loves and Kotodwe, 2021
Steel pipe, auto base cast Aluminium, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, pastel.
214 cm x 122 cm
$7, 500
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Sankofa, 2021
Steel pipe, iron rod, cast Aluminium, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, charcoal, white glue.
260 cm x 122 cm
$8,500
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Kuran Gawayi, 2021
Steel pipe, cast Aluminium, plywood, acrylic paint, auto base,vegetable oil, charcoal, white glue, hinges.
226 cm x 236 cm
$14,000
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Nana Yaa's Flower, 2021
Steel pipe, iron rod, cast Aluminium, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, white glue, Skuba fabric.
240 cm X 122 cm
$8,000
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Otonous, 2021
Steel pipe, iron rod, cast Aluminium, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil.
214 cm x 122 cm
$8,000
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Poma ne Pills, 2021
Steel pipe, auto base cast Aluminium, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil.
227 cm x 122 cm
$7, 500
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Golden Genesis, 2021
Steel pipe, cast Aluminium, iron rods, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, (random studio tools and materials)
163 (L) x 104 (H) x 77 (B)
$14,000
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Dangerous Kidney, 2021
Steel pipe, cast Aluminium, iron rods, acrylic paint, vegetable oil.
277 cm X 122 cm
$8,000
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Dream State, 2021
Steel pipe, cast Aluminium, iron rods, plywood, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, (selected drawing books).
95 (B) x 95 (L) x 92 (H)
$12,000
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Biem Kekabom, 2021
Steel pipe, cast Aluminium, iron rods, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, hinges.
214 cm x 122 cm
$12,000
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Agudie ne npiaaw, 2021
Steel pipe, cast Aluminium, iron rods, acrylic paint, vegetable oil, plywood, synthetic gold-leaf.
280 cm x 122 cm
$8,500
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A. I. B., 2021
Steel pipe, cast aluminium, iron rods, acrylic paint, vegetable oil,Scuba flower.
223 cm X 122 cm
$9,000
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