KYALO’S METALLIC ART MYSTERIOUS REVEALS ‘THE SHAPE OF WATER’
By Margaretta wa Gacheru
(posted 4 March 2018)
Justus Kyalo is one of Kenya’s finest
contemporary abstract
painters. But in light of the work that he’s currently showing at Red Hill
Gallery, one might also call him one of our best artistic alchemists. That’s
because, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, an alchemist is
technically someone who practices alchemy or who’s engaged in the process of
transforming something “in a mysterious or impressive way”.
The ‘something’
that he’s transformed are ordinary galvanized metal sheets. There’s nothing ‘ordinary’
about them after he’s ‘painted’ them with acid and blended the acid and metal
mix (the metal having been coated with molten zinc to ‘galvanize’ it) with
plain water. The effect is quite miraculous.
Kyalo says
he mainly uses a brush to paint the acid onto his metallic ‘canvas.’ “In that
respect, I have some control over the process,” he says at the Sunday afternoon
opening at Red Hill. But occasionally he pours acid onto the metal, allowing
the acid to move and work as it will.
Then, when
he pours water onto the metal sheets (some of which are up to nine or ten feet
long), the alchemy is out of his control.
Kyalo admits
the outcome of the process -- these metallic ‘paintings’ -- are a combination
of control and serendipity. Or rather, they’re ‘controlled accidents’.
Kyalo’s
works at Red Hill come in all sizes. Several are squares (around three feet by
three feet). But mostly they are long rectangular works, two of which run from
the floor to the ceiling in Hellmuth and Erica Rossler-Musch’s spacious gallery
(which Hellmuth specifically built for the purpose of presenting fascinating works
by both Kenyan and other East African artists).
The acid
itself has a corrosive effect on the metal, apparently eating through the zinc
coating and creating a rusty brown and ochre bundle of hues that take on
organic shapes, all of which seems to have been produced purely by way of the
alchemy.
In this his
second solo exhibition at Red Hill, Kyalo has stepped back from working with
oils and acrylics on canvas. Frankly, I like the freedom that he seems to let
loose when he experiments with acid and water.
Those spaces
on his metallic sheets where he initially leaves without acid take on a very
different bluish-grey hue. But once he pours the water onto the metal surfaces,
there is often a merger between acid and H20. That’s when the chemical dynamic
gets interesting. The amazing mix tends to flow wherever it will.
(I’m writing
this review just a few hours before the Academy Award winners are to be
announced, so I’m inclined to suggest that his paintings convey a winning
formula that constitutes “the shape of water”!)
In fact, as elusive
as water’s shape may be, Kyalo seems to nail it as it takes on colorful,
arabesque contours that surprise and delight the eyes.
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