PAUL ONDITI AT THE ART SPACE

HELTER-SKELTER ONDITI’S LATEST EPISODE OF SMOKEY’S TRAVELS

By margaretta wa Gacheru 12.2015

(This story appeared in hard copy in Business Daily late in 2015 but was never put online. So I'm taking this opportunity to share it with those interested.

Paul Onditi's portrait by Dale Webster hung next to Gor Soudan's at Red Hill Gallery's recent 2016

One of the first things Paul Onditi did after getting back from living in Germany for nearly a decade was to introduce us to his imaginary best friend who he’s named Smokey.

That was back in 2012 when nobody knew we’d still be getting to know Smokey up to now when Onditi is having a solo exhibition entitled ‘Helter-Skelter’ throughout December at Wambui Kamiru’s new Art Space in Westlands.

In fact, Smokey and Onditi’s unusual techniques of creating multimedia art have invariably been the key eye-catching aspects of all the artist’s exhibitions, be they group or solo.

Onditi’s current show (which fills two floors of The Art Space) once again stars Smokey as the central subject of his enigmatic showcase. Smokey is just as intriguing as ever despite the fact that Onditi only shows us the backside of his intrepid friend. Apparently that’s because Smokey is ever on the move, and our role as observers is to let him take the lead as he blazes trails into uncharted territories.

It’s as if he’s an adventurous explorer who can travel anywhere or just as far as the artist’s imagination will take him. And while Onditi insists Smokey is nothing like his ‘alter ego’, he also claims Smokey is just like “you, me, anybody and everyone”, implying he is just an ordinary guy.

But just as the artist is not an ordinary guy, neither is Smokey, a character who we’ve seen grow and change and get ever-more adventurous since he first appeared on the local arts scene at Onditi’s first exhibition at Alliance Francaise.

For when he first arrived, Smokey seemed somewhat alienated, a solitary soul stepping out into a wild and wooly world. Back then, much of Onditi’s paintings were filled with various shades of grays, black and shadowy white.

But however drab seemed his colors, the artist himself was obviously in an experimental mode, fueled by curiosity as he crafted his art on metallic pieces of paper with the main subject being the early adventures of Smokey  which Onditi etched out using tools other than ordinary brushes and palette knives.

But Smokey and his maker have traveled very far since then. He’s still on the move, on a journey to who knows where.

At his recent opening (December 10th), the artist was asked what was Smokey’s final destination? Onditi clearly enjoyed keeping his audience guessing.

“If Smokey discloses that [place], his story will be over, his journey will be done, the mystery will be gone and he’ll have no more reason to exist, which is why I don’t outline where he’s going next,” said Onditi.

What’s clear about his Helter Skelter show is that Smokey has traveled many places, most of which are no longer conveyed in shades of gray. Instead, his use of color is now vibrant and varied, but it is only one aspect of his art which is multi-layers as well as multi-media.

For an artist, Onditi is most generous about explaining how his concepts, materials and  techniques work together to create ‘paintings’ that might look like collage but are a whole lot more complex. For while all his current works are created either on paper or plastic polythene, Onditi combines paint, pencil and printer’s ink placed on his flat sheet using a ‘photocopy transfer’ technique.

After that, Smokey gets situated in various mindscapes that feel more like visual streams of consciousness since he often seems to be walking in groundless space, as if defiant of laws of gravity and other earthly constraints.

Ultimately, Onditi seems to enjoy the enigmatic and ambiguous since just as Smokey’s destination is undefined, so the places and spaces through which he journeys seem to be encrypted in a visual language that only the artist understands.

Not that Onditi’s ‘paintings’ are abstract since Smokey is always there on route to who-knows-where. One can simply call them semi-abstract and conceptual since the artist clearly knows what he’s up to as he transfers all sorts of specially selected photocopied images, which he often paints over to accentuate specific points of interest.

Ultimately, it may well be that the title of Onditi’s show, Helter Skelter, explains the gist of his exhibition which is that while Smokey [and the artist] are still very much on the move, they haven’t yet settled; they are still trekking (helter-skelter, here and there) and they plan to be doing so for quite some time to come.