Installation view of Ameh Egwuh “Life After Life” at Rele Gallery, Los Angeles. Photos by Paul Salveson, courtesy Rele Gallery, Los Angeles.
if you truly believe that death is not the end, but rather the threshold to a new dimension of life, then why shouldn’t we throw parties instead of funerals? Why shouldn’t the life’s vibrant garden—its origin—also be its sendoff? In the radiant work of Nigerian painter Ameh Egwuh, viewers move through a series of scenarios in which the soul gracefully, restfully floats across that threshold, amid the trappings of celebration.
Across the works in Egwuh’s debut solo show, _Life After Life,_ at the new Los Angeles location of Lagos-based Rele Gallery, we most often encounter a single figure, a young Black man whom the artist insists is “not specifically a self-portrait,” and whose face we never see. Egwuh deploys a lexicon of color, shape, and rich symbols behind and around this figure. Each background features wide-striped vertical panels, like wallpaper made of the sky—blue on blue, with springtime clouds at eye level with the viewer and the ascendent figures, whose earthly life has ended, but whose whatever-is-next is just beginning. And there are white doves, in flight and at rest; and there are clocks with no hands on the faces; there are hourglasses and flowers, and sometimes a patch of lush green lawn.
Ameh Egwuh. “Life After Life 4” (2020). Acrylic on canvas. 54” x 60”. Courtesy of Rele Gallery, Los Angeles.
Pink balloons are a frequent motif—assertive, even aggressively signaling the birthday party energy of the deathliness. Pink balloons carpet the floor at Rele Gallery, too, which not only broadcast this upbeat and celebratory symbolism out into the world, but whose proliferation made it impossible to enter or move through the space without gently kicking them out of the way. And if you’ve never tried it, please know that it is also impossible to be sad or angry while you’re kicking pink balloons around.
By the time you reach the paintings, you are experiencing the youthful energy of play and pleasure the artist intends. The relaxation and eager peacefulness being experienced by the figures in the paintings takes hold, and you are now ready to contemplate the great beyond. Some ascendants are dressed in more formal attire, and the gentle backwards arcs of their posture—as though being carried by an invisible hand—evoke Robert Longo’s forever falling businessmen. Some are dressed in more casual, even sports clothes. These might sit with a bit of a slump, or allow themselves to waft upwards on breezes and bunches of balloons with the more poignant poses of Renaissance paintings, especially _pietas_. There is a heavy quiet, what the artist describes as “a sense of resignation”, but it is more beatific and trusting than any feeling of resistance or disappointment; there is no struggle.
Ameh Egwuh. “Life After Life 5” (2020). Acrylic on canvas. 54” x 60”. Courtesy of Rele Gallery, Los Angeles.
_Life After Life_ takes its title from the 1975 book by psychiatrist Raymond Moody, who has famously stated, “I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my personal experiences, death is, in my judgment, simply a transition into another kind of reality.” As this idea not only resonates with the very sunny disposition of Egwuh himself, the artist further feels that during this past year of fear, with death looming as a relentless threat, it was “more important than ever to reevaluate the meaning of life and to embrace its joys while we have them.” To contemplate mortality, infinity, hope and transcendence, and also to laugh. To look to the sky, kick some pink balloons, and enjoy some truly fresh, celebratory, spiritual surrealism.
Ameh Egwuh. “Life After Life 7” (2020). Acrylic on canvas. 54” x 60”. Courtesy of Rele Gallery, Los Angeles.
