I am AJO, a 29-year-old Togolese artist painter, a complex, creative spirit with a hypersensitive soul that has been nurtured by art since early childhood. My real name is Adzovi Happy AMEWUHO, and I am the director of Pearl’s Concepts, a creative and digital agency.
Art has always been present around me, in nature and in everyday experiences, both mundane and exceptional. It all started with writing, a poem, an instruction and several essays that led to the creation of a personal blog a few years ago (realtalkdadzovi.wordpress.com) and a series of poetic, lyrical texts.
Painting was a calling for me two months ago… and since then, it has been a frenzy and a proliferation of works that come from a self that is gradually deconstructing and reconstructing itself. I am completely self-taught.
« For me, being an artist means feeling deeply, both oneself and the world, in order to compose works that await their recipient. » Ajo
Transforming emotions into art is my whole existence. It is a transcendence of souls. Art is a vital need for humans today in the digital age, in this era of information overload. It is a return to the expression of the true self, a vital break from the noise and, above all, a powerful means of transmission from generation to generation.
I work with emotions and communicate them to others through colours, shapes, overlapping layers, drawings and undulations. I use colours according to states and emotions, doubling or nuancing the layers to reinforce the intensity of the colours, which in turn convey the intensity of what I feel or want to communicate.
I work mainly on canvas with gouache and acrylic. Sometimes I mix the two, I go with my instinct. So it ranges from using brushes, fingers, kitchen roll, bottle caps, loincloths, glue, geometric elements, syringes, etc.
My style is primarily abstract, allowing myself to be surprised by the works when, and only when, I can detach myself from them. I experiment with other styles such as textural art and drawing. But you will also find works in my studio that fall within the categories of lyrical abstraction, Fauvism, and Expressionism.
AJO
ABSTRACT PORTRAIT – DULCIS COMPLEXITAS by AJO
This painting is a representation of the fluctuating states and emotions that a hypersensitive human being may experience. It is an abstract portrait of the deconstruction and reconstruction of the soul. Can we really perceive it? This painting presents what seems imperceptible to the conventional eye. The mixture of nuances, contradictions and contrasts of human complexity. While in reality we can only perhaps feel it, here it is above all a matter of deep observation, of contemplating the beauty of the details that transport you into this universe of soothing colours.
AGBEWO – SPECTACLE DE LA VIE by AJO
It is an ecosystem, an interconnection of several lives and life forms. It is several diverse existences, each with its own story, state, dreams, desires and hopes. It is the spectacle of life, of a society, of spirits, animals, chimeras, humans and objects.
When you look at AGBEWO, think of desires, motivations, beauty, love, vices, disappointments, passions, greatness, stature, loneliness, sorrow, joy, wandering, faith, spirituality.
DOLOR EVIGILATIO – PULCHRA CALAMITAS by AJO
It is a complex and vivid representation of a painful awakening and beautiful misfortune. It is a letting go, a recognition of pain and trauma through points of tension, inflicted by others, constructed by those around us and fuelled by blindness. A recognition of the pain of the self and of human monsters. It is a representation of a feminine universe that is liberating itself. It is a state, a mixture of emotions. It is a free fall, of a chained head and a body that is liberating itself. It is an endearing, disturbing, intriguing beauty that attracts frenzied desires, desires for possession, domination, inhabiting the mind, manipulation. An irrepressible search for something we cannot explain.
This work is a painful spectacle, a dramatic theatre of a power that can only be felt.
VIR SCISSUS by AJO
It is a memory of masculinity… A distressing but beautiful contemplation of men as they are today in my society. Broken, torn, shattered, caught between distant dreams, missed opportunities, love, complexity, difficulties, quests, vices and exutoirs.
It is a restricted, blurred, cracked, sometimes dry universe that reveals wounds that are still painful.
It is also beauty, sensuality, liveliness, intensity and passion.
AJO art
Lomé, Togo.
