Quirk my mannerism, 2021, exemplifies the mix of spontaneity, emotional vulnerability, and exploration inherent to Jadé Fadojutimi’s artistic process—sweeping, softened arcs of green sway across the background of the canvas, as jagged streaks of oilstick dart in a colorful tangle of drawn lines. The artist often creates a painting in a single night, moving through the actions that form each composition like a midnight ballet—brushing broadly across the canvas ground, dripping concentrated pigments in gestural sweeps, and drawing onto the canvas with oil sticks, often directly onto still-wet paint layers. None of these steps are predetermined; but rather, they occur in the moment, as Fadojutimi follows her intuition through a process she calls “orchestrating randomness.”ⁱ

 

Fadojutimi’s process follows in the footsteps of her twentieth-century forebears, including Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell. These Abstract Expressionist painters emphasized spontaneity and the physical action of painting as central components of artmaking. Fadojutimi’s works build upon these traditions in distinctly contemporary ways, with a visually striking use of fluorescent colors and compositions that combine free line and fields of color.

 

These same dynamic combinations of line and color illustrate another major source of inspiration for the artist: Japanese anime. Within Quirk my mannerism, the neon pink and orange lines almost radiate with motion over the green and yellow background, as if depicting a character flying across an animated landscape. Fadojutimi also looks to more contemporary artists such as Amy Sillman, Laura Owens and Makiko Kudo, whose influence is evident particularly in the primacy of color in Fadojutimi’s practice and life.

 

In her most creatively productive sessions, Fadojutimi “dances and runs at the canvas, scales ladders, cries, and sometimes breaks off to write in her diary.”ⁱⁱ This inextricable connection between painting and writing is significant for the artist, as she considers both practices an essential part of her process. As she describes it, “the excitement to write in the middle of painting is just the same as the excitement to place the­­­­ next mark on the canvas.”ⁱⁱⁱ Titles come to her through this writing, and the centrality of language is abundantly clear from the poetic names of her works. Ranging from the pithy, to the alliterative,­ to the long and wordy, the language she uses tells a story. The present work’s title, Quirk my mannerism, plays with the viewer’s verbal expectations; the word “quirk” is used unexpectedly as a verb, leading the viewer to contemplate what the title could be asking them to do—how can one “quirk” Fadojutimi’s mannerism?

 

“I completely bathe in the conversations between color, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances that allow me to gush. Since I have no systematic way of working, I find myself painting slightly differently each time.”
—Jadé Fadojutimi

 

In a way, Fadojutimi’s titles encourage the viewer to seek out corresponding representational forms within her abstract compositions. The artist has frequently commented on the tension between abstraction and figuration, which she sees “as opposite ends of the same spectrum.”^iv While not purposefully creating representative compositions, she notes that her “paintings derive their shapes, colors and patterns from clothing, anime, video games, soundtracks, childhood obsessions, memories, drawings, traumas, experiences, and objects I have collected along the way. They are woven together into emotive environments that breed characters and forms.”^v The forms in Quirk my mannerism hint at these characters imagined by Fadojutimi—a circular eye here, a bent limb there, frantic movement suggesting animate life—but ultimately leave the painting wide open to interpretation, allowing each viewer to experience it personally.

 

Collector’s Digest

• Fadojutimi is the youngest artist with work in the collection of Tate Modern, London; the museum purchased I Present Your Royal Highness, 2018, when the artist was only twenty-six years old. Her work also populates the collections of the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and the Institute for Contemporary Art, Miami, among others.

• Phillips holds the auction record for Fadojutimi with Myths of Pleasure, 2017, realizing  £1.1M ($1.6M USD) at Phillips’ 20^th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in London in 2021.

• Currently, her work is on display in Space for Imaginative Actions at Kunstmuseum Bonn, through Jan. 1, 2024, and at the Shah Garg Foundation, New York, in Making Their Mark, an exhibition of significant women artists of the past century, through Jan. 27, 2024.

 

 

ⁱ Jadé Fadojutimi, quoted in “Jadé Fadojutimi – 'The Numbing Vibrancy of Characters in Play',” PEER Gallery, Aug. 11, 2022, video, online.

ⁱⁱ Alex Needham, “‘Painting takes me over – like witchcraft’: Jadé Fadojutimi, art’s hottest property,” The Guardian, Sep. 7, 2022, online.

ⁱⁱⁱ Fadojutimi, quoted in PEER Gallery.

^iv Fadojutimi, quoted in David Trigg, “Jadé Fadojutimi – interview: ‘I bathe in the conversations between colour, texture, line, form, composition, rhythm, marks and disturbances,’” Studio International , Apr. 26, 2021, online.

^v Ibid.