Going straight from Oxford to Yale, Adeniyi-Jones’ time at the latter institution was one of intense transformation. The now Brooklyn-based artist found success upon graduating from Yale in 2017. “I sold about five paintings from my studio before I left school, and took that money, moved to New York and got an apartment. That money went a long way and set off a chain reaction of hope.” After his move to New York, he found work and gallery representation with American galleries, and eventually caught the eye of White Cube in 2021. His painting Blue Dancer (2017) was included in a popular 2022 travelling exhibition, Young, Gifted and Black; from this month, his work will be on view at White Cube Hong Kong for his first solo exhibition in Asia, Deep Dive.

At first glance, Adeniyi-Jones’ colourful canvases most commonly elicit comparisons to Henri Matisse, the famed fauvist artist known for his bold use of colour, figurative work, collage and cut-outs. But upon closer viewing—and perhaps with the understanding that he draws inspiration from West African mythology—the artist’s work displays a distinctive aesthetic, an almost graphic approach characterised by androgynous black and brown bodies in motion, embedded in swirling, patterned motifs.

“I get Matisse thrown at me all the time”, Adeniyi-Jones says. “But I didn’t grow up looking at Matisse—I grew up looking at pop art.” An art teacher introduced him to the genre when he was ten years old—around the same age as he started consuming print graphic novels and comics. “I really enjoyed the print medium, its finish and the imagery”, the artist says, adding that his favourites included Japanese manga series One Piece, Bleach and Dragon Ball Z.

A keen sense of movement radiates from Adeniyi-Jones’ art, a quality it shares with the action-orientated imagery found in anime and manga, and other comic books. Curving figures, who are often loosely based on deities and characters from mythology of the West African ethnic group Yoruba, are depicted, seemingly mid-motion and often described as dancing. To a certain extent, the figures represent the artist; all the hands depicted are based on his own. But to a larger extent, the artist uses dance, movement and expressive gestures to create a narrative about how Black bodies navigate space.

Comic books are a contemporary version of mythology, a way to convey moral lessons through entertaining art and storytelling. Adeniyi-Jones approaches his work in a similar fashion: he believes his paintings serve as a visual accompaniment to the slew of contemporary literature that has recently come out of West Africa, particularly Nigeria, and the African diaspora. The artist is inspired by older authors such as the late Chinua Achebe of Things Fall Apart fame, established contemporary ones such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, best known for Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun, and younger emerging voices like Akwaeke Emezi and Yaa Gyasi, with whom the artist feels a synergy. “They are my contemporaries, young, but they’re putting out full novels; it’s a new era”, says Adeniyi-Jones of the recent recognition of the West African cultural scene. “Some of them are a bit rough around the edges, but they’re really pure and visceral, and I feel that it’s the same way I’m working to make art for all these shows.”

Travel has been an essential part of artist’s understanding his multigenerational West African heritage, as a member of its diaspora. “It’s two parts of self-discovery: moving to America was me understanding what it meant to be a Black artist and its historical impact; but once you touch the African continent, you’re not a Black artist, you’re just an artist—and that’s the second stage.”

A trip to Senegal to take part in the Black Rock residency—a programme started by famed African American artist Kehinde Wiley, best known for painting Barack Obama’s presidential portrait—kick-started that second stage for Adeniyi-Jones. “That trip was me understanding what I represent as a Nigerian British artist, because [although] I’m not Senegalese, I felt very local.”

Throughout this process of self-discovery and understanding his place in the world, and through encountering the practices of significant Black artists, the artist has realised the value of legacy. While he doesn’t create with the intention of leaving his own legacy, he does think about how his work will inform future generations in the same way that Thompson and Hendricks’ works influenced him. “I want [my work] to be up for use in the same way that I’m using other people’s stories, the same way that I’m learning from other people. If it can be educational, then, yes, I absolutely perceive that as being a responsibility at this stage.”

The artist cites Frank Bowling, the famed Guyanese British painter who came to America in the seventies, as a prime example of one of many artists who have had a similar experience to him. “I am deeply invested in that—to continue on [their legacy], not in a direct way, but just in being considerate about what I’m doing.”

To fully embrace this view, and process how the present links up with the future, Adeniyi-Jones feels he needs to make art that takes more time to produce. It’s a change he has started to make, despite the high demand for his paintings and the pressure to constantly create. “I need to start thinking more slowly, intellectually and historically”, he says.

Creating his new lithograph works, which are part of the Hong Kong exhibition, gave him an opportunity for more mindfulness. Being slow and meticulous is intrinsic to printmaking, allowing him time to carefully consider every action. “You have to work with the medium itself and the printing press, and they encourage you to take a step back and rationalise your creative ego”, he says. “[The lithographs are] quite instrumental in all the paintings that I have made since then, in the past seven months or so.”

Curved figures make their way into the lithographs too. This particular series, Midnight Blues (2022), takes inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s movement which saw the revival of African American music, dance, literature and all forms of visual culture. In making these prints, the artist drew from the work of two significant cultural figures from that period in particular: artist Aaron Douglas and writer Richard Bruce Nugent. Adeniyi-Jones encountered the movement upon moving to the US, and the exposure to it prompted him to reflect on the specific kind of Blackness intrinsic to African American identity. The confluence of diasporic African and European art histories is also very much present in the artist’s lithographic work.

The solace of print-making is helping the artist stay inspired and figure out how to make his next creative move. There’s a lot at stake for him; but perhaps his hard work and influence will one day cause a young artist to say of his own practice: “I always get Adeniyi-Jones thrown at me.”

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