STANDING PINE

STANDING PINE is pleased to present two exhibitions focusing on international contemporary black artists in both Nagoya and Tokyo spaces as a series project “Stories from Africa : Chapter 2” introducing contemporary African art and artists who have a root in Africa.

STANDING PINE Nagoya will hold a solo exhibition entitled “Bending Back” by Ethiopian painter Tegene Kunbi. In his first solo exhibition in Asia, the artist presents his latest creations, specially created for this unique occasion.

Tegene Kunbi was born in 1980 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. He completed a Painting and Art Education degree at the Fine Arts School at the University of Addis Abeba in 2004 and went on to teach at Kotebe College Academy. With the help of the prestigious DAAD scholarship, he left Ethiopia in 2008 to study at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 2011. He now works in Berlin and has been part of multiple group and solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad as well as collaborative international projects and workshops, for example in Paris, Casablanca, New York, Nairobi, Nouakchott, and Amsterdam. Tegene is also the winner of the prestigious award Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor at Dak’Art Biennale 2022.

Tegene creates compositions of different geometric shapes and colors, which express his personal vision of his native landscape, fabrics, clothes, and wall paintings. Oil and textile combine to create surfaces of vibrant textures and layers of color. A dominant feature in his works is its use of strident and assertive colors. The abstract vertical and horizontal stripes and blocks of color in Kunbi’s paintings nonetheless bear close affinities to the brilliant hues of Ethiopian heritage in Orthodox or Coptic manuscripts, murals and various patterned textiles.

Colour is a vocabulary I use to give voice to aspects of my cultural heritage. Each hue is a conversation with the next, producing a sense of harmony and tension. Tonality, density and the rectilinear grid are also an integral part of the work. Through this language I convey the dynamism and complexities within my personal experience and that of my community. The underlying structure of the paintings repeats across a large body of work. This warp and weft is intrinsic to that of the Ethiopian textiles used in religious ceremonies that are at once inspiration source and more recently a material within the works. This aesthetic framework is reinforced and challenged all at once throughout the painting process which in itself is a ritual and also fight to reclaim a form of spirituality.

Tegene Kunbi

Bending Back, the title of the show, resonates with the process that the artist undertakes to create his works. With increasing intensity, the process of creation of Kunbi's art is composed by a deep self-interpretation and response between the harmony of the colours and the harmony of his spirit. Bending back, draws attention to the countless moments in which the artist has looked back on his decision made on the canvas, a fundamental process that helps the works to bloom and becoming incredible and intimate creations of the artist. By reflecting and questioning himself, Kunbi looks back on his decisions, that will remain forever on the canvas and accepts them, embraces them, recognizing those signs as the word coming out from his own subconscious that states in his mind.

Bending Back, in the words of the artist, means accepting these steps, whether they turn out to be right or wrong. Therefore, Looking back to the past, in order to be able to live and create with the present, becomes the prerogative that allows his works to come to life. This is also a metaphor on the way that we live our lives, accepting what we went through and elaborating it, is the only way to build our present and future.

Date: 2024.5.4 Sat - 2024.5.25. Sat / We will be open on Saturday, May 4th and Sunday, May 5th.
Hours: 13:00 - 18:00
Closed on Monday, Tuesday and National holidays

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