Kayode Ojo featured in The New York Times
Ablaze With Art: Thriving Galleries in Lower Manhattan
by Will Heinrich
October 15, 2020
The conceptual artist Kayode Ojo continues to arrange found objects with a masterly touch in The Aviator, a sophomore show at Martos named after Martin Scorsese’s 2004 biopic of Howard Hughes. A phoropter, the device optometrists use to determine a patient’s prescription, hangs at eye level near the gallery entrance, at once a metaphor for art and art itself. (Let the artist shape your vision if you dare!) Or is it a comment about structural biases?

Things only get more slippery as Mr. Ojo goes on to arrange prop handcuffs, chrome-plated music stands, replica pistols, open Swiss Army knives, and other tools with reflective surfaces in minimal but well-ordered piles. Because the placement of all these objects appear to be as significant as the items themselves, they all become terms in a single, all-encompassing visual language, supple and thought-provoking but endlessly ambiguous.