Awol Erizku: 多維空間 Quaquaversal
Ben Brown Fine Arts is delighted to present 多維空間 Quaquaversal, an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Awol Erizku. This bold showcase, featuring paintings, neon installations, and a newly unveiled series of bronze sculptures, builds on the artist’s ongoing engagement with the city of Hong Kong, first initiated in his 2018 exhibition 慢慢燃燒 Slow Burn. 多維空間 Quaquaversal continues Erizku’s exploration of materiality, symbolism, and cultural intervention, expanding dialogues around cultural authorship and art history while electrifying African diasporic identity in a powerful act of revival.
Erizku reimagines the visual and linguistic landscapes of music, popular culture, and sports symbolism, deconstructing and reconstructing cultural motifs to create nuanced narratives that favor Afrocentric perspectives. In 多維空間 Quaquaversal, Erizku fuses disparate elements, producing a cultural flip that re-examines the established canons of art history, philosophy, and language. At the heart of his practice is a dissection of the persistent hegemony of Eurocentric ideals, unmasking their quiet colonisation of global cultural narratives and intellectual frameworks. This critique examines how these ideals subtly yet powerfully continue to dictate standards of beauty, knowledge, and civilisation, often at the expense of diverse and marginalized worldviews, particularly in art. Erizku’s work defies these dominant frameworks, offering instead an Afrocentric vision he terms Afro-Esotericism.