Ian Mwesiga
Beyond the Edge of the World
FLAG Art Foundation, New York
Through May 4, 2024
The FLAG Art Foundation presents Ian Mwesiga: Beyond the Edge of the World, the Ugandan artist’s debut institutional solo exhibition in the United States. Comprised of eleven oil paintings created between 2021 and 2023, Ian Mwesiga’s recent works embrace the mystery, fantasy, and possibility of the unknown.
Ian Mwesiga’s canvases begin with the figure—fictional characters formed from the artist’s imagination—around which he constructs surreal environments, pairing seemingly familiar landscapes with quietly bizarre atmospheres. This contrast is achieved through Ian Mwesiga’s manipulation of the proportion and setting of quotidian objects. In Tales of the Moonlight Boy, 2023, a bare-chested man reclines on a crinkly, pink satin sheet draped over an ornate balustrade, while a striking, orange bird perches atop a globe-sized passion fruit; in Lady in a Blue Dress at a Bus Stop, 2023, a woman in a brightly patterned dress waits in anticipation on a desolate sidewalk while a figure holding an umbrella dissolves into a grisaille fog.
Within the composition, Ian Mwesiga’s figures appear as if they are situated at the intersection of a parallel dimension that, whether solitary or coupled, suggest isolation. His world consists of ephemeral reflections, refractions, and shadows; like symbols in a dream, imagery recurs throughout the exhibition. In these sequences, order is expressed through tiles and bricks and abstraction is realized through overgrowth and mist—the natural world brought into high contrast. Here, seemingly disparate elements like falling leaves, partially-eaten apples, and black-headed gonolek birds occupy a familiar universe where seasonal, temporal, and lunar cycles are suspended.
A striking spectrum of blue unites the works in Beyond the Edge of the World, gracing glistening pools, abandoned stairwells, and Pepsi billboards with brilliant hues. Ian Mwesiga welcomes the color’s inherent dichotomies, capable of underscoring a sense of calm or melancholy. With blue, he melds the sky, land, and sea, creating a mirroring effect that connects unfathomably vast nature with the landscape in and around Kampala—interwoven with visions from his personal life, experiences, and travels.
The exhibition’s title is borrowed from Haruki Murakami’s 2002 novel Kafka on the Shore. As the author describes and the artist depicts, “Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And hovering about there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”
A commissioned text by Dr. Darla Migan, art critic, philosopher, and professor at The New School, New York, NY, accompanies Ian Mwesiga’s exhibition.
IAN MWESIGA (b. 1988) is a painter living and working in Kampala, Uganda. Mwesiga graduated with a BA in Industrial Fine Art & Design from Makerere University, Kampala, in 2014. Solo exhibitions include Theater of Dreams, Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago, IL (2022), and Who am I?, AKA Gallery, Kampala (2014). His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Un Abrazo, Mariane Ibraham, Mexico City, Mexico (2023), La Vie en Rose, Mariane Ibrahim, Chicago, IL (2022), J’ai Deux Amours..., Mariane Ibrahim, Paris, France (2021); African Culture and Design Festival (ACDF) Lagos, Nigeria (2017); Young Guns, Circle Art Agency, Nairobi, Kenya (2017); East African Modern and Contemporary Art Auction, Circle Arts Agency, Nairobi, Kenya (2016); among others. Ian Mwesiga’s work has been featured in Art Basel, Expo Chicago, The Armory Show, and Paris+ Art Basel. Ian Mwesiga participated in Asiko Art School residency, Lagos, Nigeria, in 2015.
FLAG ART FOUNDATION
545 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001
Ian Mwesiga @ FLAG, NYC - February 23 - May 4, 2024
