Waiting for Tomorrow, a solo exhibition of works by Sam Ovraiti is the first solo outing of the artist after his retrospective exhibition at Alexis Galleries in 2019. Born in 1961 and currently working in Lagos, Nigeria, Ovraiti is known as one of the best contemporary artists to have tested the limit and boundaries of colour, over the years.

In this exhibition, his oeuvres from 1994 to 2022 are presented as epiphanies into the significance of appreciating time and living in the moment. His personal experience has made him realize that the tomorrow he was waiting for had already happened and the works that would give him values had already been created. The works that were therefore once abandoned were swiftly completed and  thus became a thing of yesterday.

In this momentous realization, his colour orchestration, good draughtsmanship and boldness to expand his range of materials remain evident. His heavily-layered impasto where he allows the nature of the medium to influence his style, his stylised forms, his subtle and contemplative watercolours as well as pastel works are rendered with infinite dedication to the complexities of colour. He began exploring pastel as a medium in 1987 in a bid to introduce it to the art community as a formidable medium. For the next four years, he used the medium constantly and made portraits of different people in the process. By 1991, he stopped making portraits in pastel and moved into abstract watercolors.

Ovraiti holds a Higher National Diploma and a Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Auchi Polytechnic and the University of Benin, respectively. Between 1985 to 1993, as a lecturer at the Federal Polytechnic, Auchi, Ovraiti trained and tutored a number of artists who have become household names in the contemporary Nigerian art world. He is known as the most expressive watercolourist in Nigeria and his exploration of chalk pastel in the 1980s popularised the medium and drove its acceptance in Nigeria.

Waiting for Tomorrow is an exhibition that sees tomorrow as yesterday and places emphasis on living in the moment.

Mathew Oyedele, Ideh Eyimofe, Ike Sandra.

Curators.

Artist Statement

This exhibition shows that what we put in our cup is what will spill tomorrow. When we are shaken by life the masterpieces of yesterday can only be shown.

I thank Patty Chidiac of Alexis Galleries for creating the space to show my works today. We expected some new works to be added to this collection without knowing that you can only spill from your cup what you have already created. We had to go through the archives to look for masterpieces to be exhibited.

Today is the tomorrow we were looking at yesterday.

Where is tomorrow? A representative of the next 24hrs will come soon. Yes. When I planned this exhibition at Alexis Galleries, I was waiting for tomorrow with such promises that I will create new works with new revelation and new results but now I know that tomorrow is already my yesterday and today.

All the works created and exhibited here were created yesterday waiting for tomorrow. Although I am better now, no new work was added to this collection in five months. Today is the time you create the tomorrow you are imagining. In fact you ended tomorrow yesterday and today is all you have left.

Sam Ovraiti