Sea View is pleased to present If The Ground Could Speak, the US debut solo exhibition by London-based artist Jamiu Agboke (b. 1989, Lagos, Nigeria). 

Both abstract and spatial, Agboke’s atmospheric paintings excavate a particular feeling or sensation rather than a specific place in the world. Responding to the history of abstraction as well as the landscape tradition, Agboke’s process is intuitive and emotive, where the external environment acts as a mirror for the internal and unfathomable. As Claude Monet wrote, “I would like to paint the way a bird sings.” 

From afar, Abgoke’s mesmeric brushwork and color palette resemble idyllic and wild countrysides, whereas up close, they break apart as disorienting glimpses of boundlessness. A sequence of hard and soft mark-making gives way to abstract curves, bristles, streaks, and runs—providing glimmers of rainfall, arid winds, lush banks, or smokey skies in an otherwise unidentifiable landscape that is expanding and contracting at once. 

Whittling down layers of paint with the brush, Agboke’s compositions often reveal a base of gessoed canvas or scintillating copper and aluminum underneath, which glitters brilliantly under natural light– and only to the naked eye, rather than the camera lens.

Bouncing between hot and cold climates, the paintings blend a variety of geological conditions that convey an impossible land or perhaps another planet. Counterbalancing chaos, Agboke might uncover a portal or road in his paintings, offering a sense of footing and respite, a place to wander when classification and language fails. Perhaps these spaces give shape to the artist and viewer’s own recollections of displacement, the fragments of places we no longer remember – or that we return to only in dreams.

If The Ground Could Speak attempts to transcribe a conversation with nature without words, the experience of listening to one’s surroundings. Agboke’s paintings emphasize these essential and intrinsic shifts imparted by nature: the welcoming curve of a grassy knoll, the loamy scent of fertile ground, a cautionary breeze.

Jamiu Agboke (b. 1989, Lagos, Nigeria) has exhibited at Sea View, Los Angeles, CA (2024); White Cube, London, UK (2023); Galerie Marguo, Paris, France (2023); Jack Barrett, New York, NY (2023); and VIN VIN, Vienna, Austria (2023). Jamiu Agboke is represented by VIN VIN Vienna / Naples.