Lot 17

Gor Soudan (Kenyan, born 1983)
Untitled VI (from Join the Dots series), 2015
Signed ‘GOR SOUDAN 2015’ (lower right)
Ink on watercolour paper
75 x 109 cm
Ksh 285,000 – 340,000
(US$) 2,500 – 3,000
Provenance: direct from the artist

Sold Ksh 358,070

Gor Soudan’s art practice shifts fluidly from the conceptual and philosophical to the physical and sensual. Mind and body are engaged in an exploration – through material labour – of the interactions observed by the artist in the surrounding environment. Simultaneously referencing both body and landscape, Soudan’s work reflects on how histories of human agency are written on both.

This piece is from a series of works on paper from Soudan’s 2015 solo exhibition Join the Dots, in which pattern recognition became part of a creative cycle of the growth, evolution and collapse of form across mediums. Here, intensive pen markings follow the maps of ink blots, creating illusions of fantastical forms, landscapes and processes.

Soudan has held numerous solo exhibitions in Kenya, including Imprints, Redhill Gallery, 2017 and Join the Dots, Circle Art Gallery, 2015. He is a Backers Fellow, after taking part in the Arts Initiative Tokyo residency in Japan in 2014. As well as Tokyo, Soudan has also exhibited in Freetown, London, Dubai and New York. His work is well collected, represented at Iwalewa-Haus, Bayreuth, as well as many private collections internationally.