Painter Luke Agada Is Pushing the Boundaries of Representation

Since earning an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago last year, painter Luke Agada’s career has taken off. Early showings at group exhibitions spanning continents—“Collective Reflection: Contemporary African and Diasporic Expressions of a New Vanguard” at Gallery 1957 in Accra, “Unusual Suspects” at African Artists’ Foundation in Lagos and “Where The Wild Roses Grow” at Berlin’s Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery—established Agada as an artist with a knack for expressing cultural identity, ambiguity and introspection in surrealist works rendered in color palettes reminiscent of his native Lagos. His first U.S. solo exhibition at Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery in September of 2023 was followed by a standout showing at Art Basel Miami Beach, where Roberts Projects featured his work in what quickly became one of the fair’s most buzzed-about booths.

All this from someone who not terribly long ago was making and selling paintings in his spare time while pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine. But just a year into his veterinary career, the Nigerian-born, Chicago-based artist quit to focus on art full-time—a pivot that involved moving from Lagos to the U.S.

“Far from home, with little familiarity and no family nearby, I experienced a constant sense of longing and nostalgia that eventually permeated my work,” Agada told Observer. “The figures I depicted began to reflect fragments of my memories, reduced to simplified forms, shadows and lines—mere vestiges of my past. I sought ways to navigate this longing and explore how the migrant form adapts to globalized spaces.”

Agada’s style is a confluence of Surrealism and postcolonial theory, and much of his work explores the “third space” concept popularized by Homi K. Bhabha. With earthy tones, shadow and light, he depicts clashes of memory and migration in psychologically engaging landscapes where intersecting cultural identities and shifting power dynamics create tension-filled environs populated by distortions representing not individuals but states of being.

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On the occasion of the opening of “Between Two Suns,” the artist’s first solo show in Los Angeles now on at Roberts Projects, Observer connected with Agada to discuss his influences, how his life’s journey has shaped his work and what he hopes people will take away from the show. With his star on the rise, expect to see more of him.

The surreal distortion in your figures is uncanny—what shaped your visual vocabulary? 

In the early stages of my practice, I was heavily influenced by European surrealists such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and René Magritte, which grounded my work in traditional figure drawing. I later became intrigued by various modernist movements, particularly the impact of modernism on American art that challenged conventional representations of the human form. This interest sparked my desire to push the boundaries of representation in my work.

Upon moving to the U.S. for my MFA at SAIC, my approach shifted significantly. Far from home, with little familiarity and no family nearby, I experienced a constant sense of longing and nostalgia that eventually permeated my work. The figures I depicted began to reflect fragments of my memories, reduced to simplified forms, shadows, and lines—mere vestiges of my past. I sought ways to navigate this longing and explore how the migrant form adapts to globalized spaces. My interest in Postcolonial theory grew during a class on the subject, as I found it deeply relatable.

Encountering the works of the New York School painters opened a new avenue for developing the visual framework of my practice. The emotions embedded in their work were palpable; they were invested in infusing meaning into forms that resonate with the entire human experience. Their unique way of freezing moments within the intermediate zones of image-making further fueled my interest. Consequently, I shifted my focus from purely orthodox surrealists to artists like Arshile Gorky and Joan Miró, who employed an automatist approach while drawing on their surrealist influences.

Who are those ghostly figures meant to be? You? An everyman? 

Although I deeply connect with the emotional and psychological states of the figures in my paintings, they are not biographical assertions of myself. Rather, they are representations of states of being, some of which are tied to specific stories or events.

What should people know about your approach to painting? 

My relationship with painting has gradually shifted or evolved over time. Earlier, I paid more attention solely to the representative image, which had a major focus on the well-defined identity of the subjects. However, I soon developed an interest in how the idea and approach to representation of the figure amongst modernist painters of the 20th century evolved. This made me realize that the theme of identity is not the only foundation or final form that my work can take. I saw the need to go beyond just the reconstruction of identity.

The transformative property of painting, amongst other things, contributed to my interest in the organic and biomorphic forms that sit at the border between the Representative and Prefigurative Image, which accurately reflects my thoughts about some of the conversations I am interested in.

I am interested in challenging the anatomy of forms and the new meaning they assume as they adapt to a new space. Doing this creates tension between them and the space they occupy. The spaces are a mix of memory and imagination, yet they’re not purely autobiographical, as I am sometimes making a space that can only exist in a painting.

I desire the paintings to have a life of their own, so there is always an ongoing negotiation between my hand and the material to capture the poetics of the moment as I layer up, add and remove paint to reveal the underpainting. I am gradually embracing the plurality of perspectives because it opens for me an infinite number of possibilities and entry points into the painted picture. Picasso and Georges Braque breaking down the picture plane into the fourth dimension was a good example for me.

Although ideological concepts are important, I do not prioritize them over painterly values. This is because painting often operates beyond the artist’s intentions, especially upon first encounter. The meaning of a picture often reveals itself later. Therefore, I approach my work with an open mind, staying highly observant and sensitive to where the process leads me, even when working through a specific idea.

How has your own cross-continental exposure impacted the evolution of your artistic style and/or narrative? 

Learning how to truly “see” is one of the most valuable experiences I’ve gained as an artist. It has enabled me to view the world contextually, through the lens of the human story—understanding that each person’s perspective is filtered through their unique experiences, histories and cultural contexts. Despite the world being incredibly interconnected, with vast diversity among people of different cultural backgrounds and nationalities, the “single story” perspective remains prevalent. This oversimplification reduces complex individuals and experiences to stereotypical narratives. I have taken a keen interest in the subjectivity of forms across borders; recognizing that the interpretation and meaning of forms, as a visual language, are shaped by individual lived experiences and perspectives.

This realization became particularly clear to me when I encountered the work of some modernist painters, such as New York School and abstract expressionist painters. Engaging with their works awakened me to new sensibilities and revealed possibilities I had not previously considered in my own work.

I’ve read that you draw inspiration from both scholarly texts and literary works; what can you tell me about those influences in particular? How, for you, does text translate into the visual? 

I recently developed an interest in postcolonial theory and literature, particularly some of the writings of Homi Bhabha that have helped in my understanding of the international and intercultural Third Space of migration, the binary opposition between geographies, between the East and West and how that is impacting the formation of hybridity and complex cultural identities in the globalized space. A part of my work has been derived from some of the lexicons, such as the migrant or alien, used to describe these new identities and their adaptation in the Third Space.

The paintings actually do resist concrete references to the theoretical part of my influences. They only carry a sensation of my thoughts and imaginations as I sample through visual references that represent the information and feeling I am trying to convey. Hence there is nothing literal about the form of the paintings that directly references my interest in Postcolonial theory visually, the scholars have done great justice in theorizing that thought through text. It’s an interpretation of all the elements that work together in the paintings to evoke the same feeling we experience about the subject.

A direct translation of text to visual information or painting would be an unnecessary and overly illustrative narration of what has already been said. This would be a bit too much to ask of the medium of painting because it cannot have the desired impact that other media like film, animation or montage would have in doing the same thing. Rather than do that as a painter, I focus on the texture of sensations like tension, movement and transition.

Painting is slow, not just as a medium or in the process, but in its ability to become. It has the propensity for not just immediacy but also a prolonged impression or impact that has to be digested over time. Hence, I feel the purpose of painting lies in serving as a catalyst to stimulate feelings or thoughts about a subject, and an effective way of doing that is not by giving you all the visual information or telling you what you already know. Sometimes, a strong painting will not force down on you more information than necessary—that will become “propagandist,” it rather offers you a few essential ingredients to draw you in, and the rest is up to you. That’s why individual interpretations and the meaning we all ascribe to forms can be quite subjective. It’s like taking a Rorschach test- our personalities are revealed in how we see.

What do you hope people will take away from the totality of “Between Two Suns”? 

First, I hope that they are able to visually digest, connect with and enjoy the formal component of the works. Through the conversations around it, I hope to invite them to meditate on the notions of displacement and hybridity and offer a visual meditation on the precarious balance between survival and dissolution. And by refusing the structuralist comfort of definitive meaning, I hope to leave space for the audience to confront their own assumptions about identity, migration and shared space.