Victor Ubah
The Breeder Open Studio

on view until October 30th 2021

In September 2021 The Breeder welcomed Nigerian painter Victor Ubah to Athens for The Breeder Open Studio, an initiative that offers Time to the Artist but also to the Viewer in order to communicate and engage with each other in more substantial ways. Victor Ubah set up a studio inside the gallery, creating a new body of works. Artists participating in the The Breeder Open Studio have the luxury of time and also the unique opportunity to spend time in the city of Athens and get inspired by its unique heritage and vibrant contemporary scene.

Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Victor Ubah (b.2000) reflects upon social infrastructure, self- determination and identity in his artistic practice. Influenced by the anime and popular cartoon animations he watched throughout his adolescence, he is inspired by an image’s ability to communicate intricate ideas about identity and personality. Inspired by Cubism, he generates the figure through an assemblage of geometric polygons that do the work of presenting the viewer with an intentional request to look things in different perspectives

In this new body of work, on view in the gallery until October 30th 2021, Ubah paints his subjects as multidimensional personalities existing within a one dimensional space. His poetic visual language marries vibrantly colored backgrounds with expressive cubist geometry, commenting on the symbiotic correlation of the individual to their community. Ubah translates the uniqueness of each personality by rendering their faces in a mosaic of protruding cubist forms while attending to their gaze with a naturalist style. His attention to each figure’s personal fashion expressed through bold textile patterns and rich color palettes amplify his ethos that “there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.”