Kelani Abass*

Lot #6
Casing History 11, 2017
Letterpress type-case and digital print
15.5 x 32.5 x 2 in.
Courtesy of the artist

About the Artwork

Kelani Abass’s (Headlands Artist in Residence ‘18) Casing History series is an ongoing investigation of time, a response to the question of whether and how a moment can be paused, captured, or preserved. Working within the letterpress type case, he trades out its typical elements of written narrative for personal visual archives: photographs from family albums, images of friends and relatives, and other autobiographical scenes. Abass employs as his tint a palette of the grays, sepias, and greens of archival imagery, in his words, “painting with time.” Juxtaposing images across decades from the 1940s onward, Abass notes that the older a photographic print gets, the paler it becomes; as each image pales, it is distilled into an expression of feelings and emotions like joy and pain, and concepts like life and death, wealth and beauty. Abass’s recent solo exhibitions include IRANTI, 31 Project, Paris; [Re:] Entanglements, Contemporary Art and Colonial Archives, National Museum Lagos; and If I could save time, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, among others; his work will be featured in the forthcoming 5th International Biennale of Casablanca.

Retail Value: $5,000