Someday Hope Will Match Reality in Our Chaotic World

Rom Isichei, Mutations and the Gilded Apostle 2015 is one of the artworks reminding us that Someday hope will match reality. Installation of 18 panels 96x144in. Image courtesy of the artist

**REVIEW: Rom Isichei’s Someday Is Today reflects the relevance of hope to human existence. It reminds us all that someday hope may match reality.**

BY KAZAD

Image: Rom Isichei's 9th Panel in Mutations and the Gilded Apostle 2015 in the exhibition Someday Is Today

Rom Isichei, 9th Panel in Mutations and the Gilded Apostle 2015. Image courtesy of the artist

LAGOS, NIGERIA- When Someday Is Today opened at the National Museum in Lagos, Nigeria, art lovers, artists, and art professionals got the opportunity to see Rom Isichei’s recent works. The new works are not the full stop in the artistic career of this enterprising contemporary Nigerian artist but rather a continuum.

Anyone who has followed Rom’s artistic career will appreciate his artistic growth. Rom’s creative adventure has been in constant flux since 1997 when he became a full-time studio artist. From trying to follow in the artistic traditions of his professors at the Yaba College of Technology, Rom has developed a style that is uniquely his.

Over the years, the flat surfaces of Rom’s paintings have become rich colorful impasto. Works like Tom, Dick and Harry, Convergence, and No One Knows shows how Rom has consistently navigated the complexities of artistic traditions to arrive at a unique artistic identity. Rom’s works are easily recognizable locally and internationally because of his unique style. As it is often said in the Nigerian art circle ‘When you see a Rom, you will know it is a Rom.’

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The collection of new works in Someday Is Today on display at the National Gallery in Lagos are indicative of Rom’s restless artistic pursuits. They reveal his never-ending urge for a rebirth of ideas couched in new ways and how they continue to manifest in innovative and creative endeavors. That originality is evident in his new works.

In his new artworks, Rom explores found objects such as corks, wires, plastic, clips, cleaning mops, plaster, corrugated zinc, and beverage drink cans to elevates his paintings with sculptural relevance. Other materials and objects used in his recent artworks include magazine tear-offs, spray paint, oil sticks/bar, plastics, among other obsolete and disused everyday objects.

Rom believes that there is always a connection between form and content. The contending issue for him as a painter is not what you paint but how you paint it. It is for this reason that process is extremely important to him than end result. Consequently, a lot of his creative effort goes into style, technique, and the substance necessary to captivate the viewing audience.

Although viewers are not privy to Rom’s creative process, the end product tells intimate stories about their creation. Rom likens his creative approach to modern human experiences and the effort to grapple with the ever-changing modern technology. He describes his process thus:

“This human process is synonymous with the process of making, which is fundamental to my studio practice. The body of works on display references my sustained engagement with materials and conceptual experimentation. They are conversations across media that explore ideas of painting, sculpture and drawing beyond their established convention.”

Why Hope is Important

Someday Is Today, the title of Rom’s current exhibition is reflective of a transition from hopelessness to hopefulness. The saying has been effectively used to engender hope for decades. For cancer patients, Someday Is Today is the slogan that brings hope for an urgent cure.

Religious groups have also adopted the Someday Is Today slogan to emphasize hope for immediate spiritual healing. Tapping into bible verses, they emphasize that hope is an integral aspect of human existence and spiritual wellbeing. Gary Carver puts it succinctly when he noted that ‘Without hope, we die from the inside before we die on the outside.’ For him, ‘Without hope, we neglect, crumble and dry up like a prune.’

Many Musicians have also written songs about hope, especially for love. One of them is the American singer Gabby Barrett. Her I Hope lyric reveals her hope and desire. Like Rom, many people have hope for their dreams to come true.

For many Nigerians, the slogan Someday Is Today resonates powerfully as a call to hope. In a country where optimism is ever fleeting, it is absolutely important for people to seize hope by the forelock. After years of the countless postulation of ‘Things will be Better Someday,’ the quest among Nigerians now is Someday Is Today. Couched in the urgency of now, the title of the exhibition expresses the need for immediate results.

Why Hope is Dangerous

Can hope be dangerous? While hope is essential for human existence, it can sometimes be trapped by illusions and dangerous. It is not unusual for people to take a flight of fancy with hope even as they reach out for reality. Such fantasies, often nurtured by slogans like Someday Is Today, are evident in this show. In Mutations and the Gilded Apostle, 2015, Rom narrates the desperate desire of people to project hope by wearing tee-shirts that reflect their thoughts.

Mutations and the Gilded Apostle, 2015, an installation made up of 18 panels measuring 96×144 in, reveals the need to project hope in the face of hopelessness. The installation features images of men and women dressed in the most fashionable way. While some wear oversized goggles, strange hairstyles, and costume jewelry, others are dressed in tee-shirts with inscriptions that are mimetic of their feelings. Some of the inscriptions read: ‘Your Opinion Is Not My Reality’, ‘Gaiety Favors The Brave,’ and ‘Loathe The Game Not The Player.’ This cosmetic finish and appearance accentuate not just global fashion trends but also how the body has become the site where history is reposed and fantasies play out.

Human Struggles

Rom’s recent works show how he continues to borrow from everyday ideas for his painting and relief sculptures. What uniquely distinguishes these recent artworks are the antidotal stories they tell. The stories are reflective of everyday experiences of the human struggles in a highly contested environment saturated with deeds and misdeed.

The relevance of Rom’s recent works permeates our social fabric. Significantly, the stylistic variance of the new artworks in Someday Is Today is an addition to Rom’s well-established tradition of exploring colors, scale, and rich impasto to create enterprising works. The figurative works bear the signature of a painter with high color sensibilities. Creative compositions, paints, and colors are innovatively explored to externalize the internal emotions of the people represented in the works.

Someday Hope Finds Reality

Someday Is Today is a factual indicator of the progress made by this young enterprising Nigerian artist. It is not surprising that Rom Isichei is one of the most celebrated young contemporary Nigerian artists today. At the auction, his artworks are attracting significant auction prices. With his art and progress in the global art market space, Rom has positioned himself in a way that whenever the history of contemporary art is written, his name will make the mark.

Rom Isiche Biography

Rom considers himself and his artistic career a work in progress in spite of his success. Born 1966 in Asaba, Delta State, Rom studied in the late 1980s at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos. After obtaining an Ordinary National Diploma in Fine Art (OND), he went on to get a Higher Nation Diploma in Painting (HND) at his alma mater. For three years, Rom worked at various advertising agencies before deciding to embrace full-time studio practice in 1997.

Since going full-time, Rom has been unrelenting in his quest to establish himself as one of Nigeria’s top young contemporary artists. He has had over seven solo exhibitions and more than twenty joint exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, Switzerland, London, Greece, and the United States.