On Saturday, August 9th, the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art (a Knight Arts grantee), hosted an artist talk with Osi Audu, whose work has been on display since May, in an exhibition that closes Saturday, August 16th. Audu spoke with artist Addie Langford and professor and writer of art criticism Michael Stone-Richards, who facilitated a discussion that covered the range of Audu’s formative development in his homeland of Nigeria, through schooling in medicine and theology, before coming to art as his primary practice. The complete conversation is posted above, and follows Audu through a winding international path, which includes study in England and Athens, Ga., before coming to focus on the body of work on display in the surrounding gallery.

On being and nothingness, the works of Osi Audu.

Detail from one of Audu’s “Fireflies” series, which show the materiality of the “being” side of his paintings.

The show deals with themes of dualism and identity, and the work falls generally into two groups, a series of diptychs in which the quality of something-ness jumps out in bright colors and stitched textures, and highlighted by contrast in a correlating partner image of nothingness, which mirrors the content with empty penciled spaces. There are also a number of “self-portraits,” which appear as black geometric shapes, shaded with graphite, rather than more figurative renderings.

Some of Audu’s self-portraits.

Langford and Stone-Richards do very complete work in prompting Audu to break down his complex relationship with symbol and the visual language of representation, a lexicon which reveals the continuation of his science training into his art practice. A fascinating discussion, which is captured in its entirety above, for those who couldn’t be there!

Another in the “Fireflies” series.

“Outer and Inner Head IV.”

In other big news, N’Namdi is pleased to announce the launch of an atelier on September 22 to teach the skills needed to run an art gallery to students who are 17 and older. Registration is open now through Sept. 19 for the fee-based certificate program that focuses on the business of art. The aim of the new atelier, staffed by veteran artists, art educators, museum curators and gallery owners, is to help grow Detroit’s nascent creative community and develop skilled arts entrepreneurs with a special emphasis on people from diverse backgrounds. Made possible by an $80,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the atelier will offer three core classes, beginning Sept. 22, taught by gallerists George N’Namdi and Monica Bowman, and art installation experts.

For further information please contact Taylor Aldridge at [email protected], or call 313-831-8700; nnamdiatelier.org. N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art: 52 E. Forest Ave., Detroit; 313-831-8700; nnamdicenter.org