The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Through experimentation with media and technique, Ronex explores the beauty that lies in the discarded and unexpected as a visual metaphor for life’s experiences.
ARTS | Dominic Muwanguzi | Imagination, fantasy, and memory are recurrent themes in Ronex’s art. They form the core to the concept of the subconscious that influences his art-making processes but also infuses an element of the unconventional in his art. His recent solo show, Mish Mash at Umoja Art Gallery, is a continuation of this philosophical approach to his work and the usual attempt to inspire self-reflection and inquiry in his audience.
The artist, like is his norm, works with a multiplicity of media—oil, cut paper, and digital collage—to create assemblages and portraits of abstracted human figures that are representative of his personal experiences as both an artist and an individual who lives and works in informal communities. This body of work in particular is about material—both physical and digital collage—as imagery for life’s experiences.
Ronex is naturally inspired by the erratic day-to-day life experiences in his community. The lack of order and formality in this environment inspires him a lot to experiment with what is possible and what is not. His studio and home are located in Makerere-Kikoni, a slummy Kampala suburb dotted with motor garages, student hostels, dingy shops, and bars. This element of sharp contrast in his community is delicately explored through the artist’s experimentation with technique and media that is irregular.
Through working with discarded objects like paper, the artist is able to create a visual narrative of finding beauty and meaning in what is thought to be worthless. Such an approach resounds the artist’s signature mode of working, where he constructs a narrative between beauty versus ugliness, sophistication versus naivety, and order versus chaos in his art. In this exhibition, the collage, a metaphor for a delightful disorder that contributes to the making of an astonishing final artwork, is like the patch motif that can be traced in many of his paintings.
The patch in the artist’s paintings suggests the idea of the continuous journey of life, often with unexpected experiences that make it both challenging and exciting. “As humans our lives are filled with different patches. The patch can be a good or bad experience, but it contributes to what life is as a whole,” says the artist. An illustration to this theory is the different fragments of paper cuttings that are added together to create a paper collage painting that grips the viewer’s attention at once.
The focus on material and technique in this exhibition echoes the concept of “the how” and not “the message” that intricately runs through his creative practice. The artist, like always, is not interested in passing on a specific message to his audience but is curious to know and experience how they’re impacted by the art. Through experimental processes with material, he lures the imagination of his audience and subconsciously co-opts them on his unwinding journey of creativity and life introspection.
Ronex’s stance on what art is or should be is shed light on here as he implicitly suggests that art should be a mirror of self-reflection and discovery. The work on showcase provides a rare opportunity to interact with the self facilitated by the monochrome hues, abstracted human figures, and a collection of found objects that reveal finding beauty in the irregular or unexpected.
His personality as an introvert and critical thinker ably influences this introspective trait in his work, such that his art is more skewed to the aspect of prompting visual inquiry and dialogue and not amusement and excitement in the audiences. Luckily this approach affords him the privilege of sometimes confronting delicate and complex issues like women’s empowerment, sexual identity, consumerism, and race.
Mish Mash, like the name suggests, is a juxtaposition of different fragments that make Ronex’s work a whole. In this exhibition, the artist combines both physical and digital collage as a metaphor for the discarded and unexpected.
Equally, this mixing provides sharp contrasts in the form of different textures, layered imagery, and found objects embedded in the artworks. As such, this mishmash of material and technique is a representation of divergent life experiences that are essential in the shaping of the individual’s life. Like the artist’s belief that art making is an ongoing process and not an end in itself, this body of work invites us to reflect on life, to perceive it as an ongoing process of becoming, where every unexpected experience is critical to our existence.
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The Mish Mash Exhibition is showing now at the Umoja Art Gallery, located on plot 1800, Moyo Close, Mukalazi Road, behind Princess Kevina Apartments.
