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In the project 60 wrd/min art critic, writer Lori Waxman explores how art writing can serve an expanded field of artists—including those incarcerated, trying to gain visas, working to establish themselves professionally, or just wanting feedback for a secret hobby. For this iteration, Waxman reviews work by Chicago-based artist Victor Olaoye.
Victor Olaoye
The paintings of Nigerian artist Victor Olaoye are not easy to look at, because it discomforts to consider a beautiful thing that is also grotesque. How can something be both? The situation is not actually so uncommon: a garden of blooms, decay, and worms; a body of curves, orifices, and death; a planet of miraculous being, unending injustice, relentless rebirth. Olaoye paints these metamorphoses as only one can, surrealistically, with exquisite blending, horrifying gaps, nauseating hues, virtuosic brushwork, overwhelming size, incessant mobility. Stylistically, “Carcass” introduces Francis Bacon to Philip Guston at an abattoir; “Two Vast and Trunkless Leg” puts Wifredo Lam through a toxic spill; “Rebirth: It Blooms and Wither” runs rococo through a Vitamix. The results enrapture as much as they terrify.
—Lori Waxman 5/11/26 11:53 AM
Victor Olaoye
victorolaoye.com
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