#ephremsolomon

[didierleclair]

“In a world where newness has become a value in and of itself, I am more moved by the compliment that what I am doing technically feels like something from the past, while embodying something that is currently relevant” EPHREM SOLOMON, ARTIST

[supportblackart]

Via @olajuartgroup 🖤👏🏾 Ephrem Solomon (@ephrem_solomon) uses wood carving as medium for his pieces as a direct link to 20-century politics, and the game of domination that goes along with it. At the heart of his works are empty faces, empty objects, that embody within solid fields of colour contemporary life in Ethiopia. Although his portraits have a timeless quality, he collages scraps of newspaper to the prints to inject them with markers of contemporary life. "My work portrays the distance between what the governed people need and want and what the response is from the governors". Words via @fondation_blachere #supportblackart #ephremsolomon #woodcarving #contemporaryafricanart #olajuartgroup #Ethiopia #woodart #art #painting #relief #artistic #artlovers #artnerd #africanart #africanartist #africanartcollector #contemporaryart #artgram #artdaily

[portraitsgallery]

Ephrem Solomon, Hope series, 2018

[anneokanyme]

@akaa_fair: Ephrem Solomon, Untitled. Represented by @circleartagency. #contemporaryart #artcontemporain #art #akaafair2016 #artfair #ephremsolomon #paris (à AKAA - Also Known As Africa)

[art-for-you]

Exhibition Review: Saatchi gallery, Pangaea II: New Art From Africa and Latin America, Room 4

The fourth room is dedicated to the woodcuts of Ethiopian artist Ephrem Solomon. These chiseled two-dimensional works on canvas have a strong graphic and minimalist aesthetic.  

Patchwork of collaged newspapers form delicately textured, yet sleek and uniform background to portraits of men and women standing in simple domestic environment. Despite the thick and minimalist lines of the woodcut, the faces are filled with expression and contemplative gaze. Calm, strength and dignity emanates from the figures.

Woodcut detail, Ephrem Solomon

Slippers and chairs populate the tableaux - banal objects charged with symbolism, they become icons for the quotidian and for domestic life. Filled with simplicity, the portraits honor the life of ordinary people.  

Using mostly squares and rectangles planes to shape the pictorial space, the tableaux are ordered and carefully composed yet the rooms depicted rather barren.  A certain sense of absence and isolation is present in the works. The geometric forms infuse rhythm in the images yet the overall mood is of calm and tranquility.

Solomon’s work in many ways present an homage to the candor of timeless everyday moments.

Woodcut detail, Ephrem Solomon

In combining distinctive techniques of woodcut and collage, the artist layer contemporary art practice with an old craft - a choice that perhaps reflects on the meshing of modernity with ancient traditions taking place in his very native Ethiopia.

With an unforeseen guttural appeal, and suspended in time, these works are seductively rendered and truly compelling.

Valerie Genty

Woodcut detail, Ephrem Solomon