Kayode Ojo
Closer
September 22, 2018 to November 17, 2018
Kottbusser Damm 7, Berlin, Germany
Exhibition Text
(A) Int. Photography Studio – Day
Anna: I'm just going to change the film. Dan: Mmm hmm. I liked your book. Your publisher sent me a manuscript. I read it last night. It kept me up 'til 4. I'm flattered. Is your heroine based on someone? Yes, she's someone called Alice. How does she feel about you stealing her life? Borrowing her life. I'm dedicated the book to her. She's pleased. Mmm. Do you exhibit? Sometimes. I have a thing next year. Portraits. Mmm hmm. Of who? Strangers. How do strangers feel about you stealing their lives? Borrowing.
(B) Int. Photography Studio – Day
Alice: You live here? Anna: I do now. Because you're single? Mmm hmm. Who was your last boyfriend? My husband. What happened to him? Someone younger. You've got a great face. Doesn't everyone? I suppose so. I just... from the book somehow I thought you'd be less... What? I don't know exactly, I... How do you feel about him using your life? That's really none of your business. You want a drink? I have some vodka in the fridge. we could have a drink. Just take my picture.
Closer takes its title from Mike Nichols’s 2004 film, in turn based on Patrick Marber’s 1997 play, that documents the tumultuous romantic lives of Alice (Natalie Portman), Anna (Julia Roberts), Dan (Jude Law), and Larry (Clive Owen). Over the course of the film, the characters cycle between infatuation, relationship, affair, and even marriage amongst each other. For the exhibition text of Closer, Ojo has selected two excerpts from the film’s script, both of which take place in Anna’s photography studio. The title image of Closer is a film still of Larry, taken from a scene in which he confronts Anna about her affair with Dan.
Selected Texts
Installation Views
Artworks
Artist Biography
Kayode Ojo’s practice emerges from a filtering of the clothing, furniture, musical instruments, cameras, faux-luxury objects, and popular media that are encountered in everyday life. His sculptures are precariously balanced arrangements of such found objects atop glass and mirrors or in readymade cages, often titled after film and theater references, performing a delicate double-duty as both consumer good and artwork. Ojo’s photographs are drawn from a decades-long archive of candid, spontaneous captures, documenting moments of performativity late at night.
Ojo (*1990, United States) lives and works in New York. He has presented three solo exhibitions at Sweetwater, most recently in 2024. Other recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Maureen Paley and 52 Walker. His work is featured in the permanent collections of the Hessel Museum of Art, Museum Brandhorst, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Stedelijk Museum, and the Studio Museum. Ojo received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2012.