Chibike zma: To Kick a Stone [Paperback]

Chib?ike ?z?ma (b. 1992, Port Harcourt, Nigeria), is a multidisciplinary artist working with painting, photography, drawing, text, and video, living and working in New Haven, Connecticut.Documented here are sixteen of the artists large paintings rendered in oil and acrylic or acrylic spray paint on canvas, made in 2022. Accompanying an exhibition of the same name at Simon Lee Gallery, London, the first solo exhibition of his work in the UK, this publication is the fourth pillar of a collaborative project by the artist, setting his own paintings in relation to video and audio works by Edward Owens and Jo?o Orecchia respectively. ?z?ma works with non-linear narratives, using a mix of painting languages that dodges and weaves the liminal spaces between representation and meaning. Fragments of stenciled letters jolt against textured pools of paint, and diaphanous figures are cropped by cinematic horizons. Comprising colorful, abstruse portraiture against stark black and white backgrounds, the paintings in To Kick a Stone are deeply suggestive, but ultimately formalist explorations of shape and composition.An introduction by Kat Sapera, Director of Simon Lee Gallery, draws upon her first encounters with the artist and details the influence of philosophy and the act of looking. Sapera brings the collaboration with Orecchia and Owens to the forefront of her discussion while touching on ?z?mas making processes.In an essay by ?z?ma, the artist himself writes lyrically upon subjects including poetry, religion, good and evil, in order to bring a number of key concepts that circle his work into the field of view.Essays by Bishupal Limbu, Associate Professor of English at Portland State University, and by Carlos Valladares, writer and critic, help amass a portrait of an artist whose inquiry is informed by film, philosophy, and pictorial languagewith the layering, unraveling, and opening-up of narrative as a core focus. Their writing brings key art historical figures into dlÓ!