16/08/2025
ARTIST TALK
In conversation with Christopher Samuel Idowu on his exhibition The Secret Place. Moderated by Ladunni Lambo.
Saturday, August 16, 2025 at Kó, Ikoyi Lagos.
The Secret Place, a solo exhibition by Christopher Samuel Idowu. Rooted in personal reflection and collective memory, this exhibition explores Idowu’s experiential connection to the divine. His visual language bridges the temporal and the eternal, the solitary and the communal, drawing on spirituality as a way of understanding selfhood, purpose, and belonging.
Idowu’s multidisciplinary practice—encompassing painting, drawing, mixed media, sound, and installation—reflects on themes of memory, transience, and transformation. His works capture moments that feel both earthly and ethereal, rendered in a palette that suggests natural earth tones, faded walls, or weathered patina. These muted tones are punctuated with subtle highlights, such as gold leaf or soft washes, that create a quiet sense of illumination.
Working across materials including acrylic, conte crayon, charcoal, pastel, spray paint, and silkscreen printing, Idowu often combines several media within a single work. This layered approach results in richly tactile surfaces. His frequent use of silkscreen and gestural mark-making reflects an interest in repetition, erosion, and memory—recalling aged prints, faded photographs, or spiritual relics.
His compositions often center on the human figure, portrayed in contemplative or symbolic states that are partially obscured, silhouetted, or veiled. Other works lean into abstraction, suggesting moments of divine encounter. Titles often reference Christian scripture and parables, allowing the works to function as contemporary icons. Many are produced in serial format as diptychs or triptychs, mirroring the structures of spiritual practice. Infused with a devotional sensibility, The Secret Place becomes both sanctuary and testimony—a sacred space where the interior life meets the external world.
