Judging from her early exhibitions at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London and the Gisela Capitain Gallery in Berlin shortly after graduating from the Royal College of Art, Jadé Fadojutimi quickly became a contemporary art star. In just a few years, her abstract paintings (by the now 31-year-old Nigerian-British artist) have entered major collections around the world, with auction prices soaring into seven figures. The record she set at Christie’s in London last March Thoughts on the Woven Twisted Garden (2021) sold for £1.6 million ($2 million), triple the previous auction result and confirming her status as one of the most dazzling figures in the art world today.
Fadojutimi left his earlier dealer to make a high-profile move to Gagosian in 2022, making his debut by fully taking over the gallery’s booth at Frieze London. Yet despite her dominance in the marketplace, her work retains a raw, pulsating energy—a deeply personal yet universally resonant exploration of self-knowledge. Her paintings are intricate tapestries of marks, gestures and flowing waves of paint, born from an immersive emotional and physical connection with the canvas. Fadojutimi paints with a visceral urgency, moving intuitively across the surface as if surrendering to its gravity.
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Her work evokes maps of landscapes and spaces unbound by traditional boundaries or timelines, open and inviting to wander. A layered system of markers guides the viewer’s gaze in mesmerizing drifts, without any single focal point or symbolic anchor point. Her work becomes an endless accumulation of traces—existential notes mixed with spiritual, almost ritualistic gestures. As Fadojutimi paints, she aligns herself with universal energy flows, constructing vast realms that oscillate between disorientation and reorientation, transcending language, culture, and personal boundaries into the universe contact areas.
Her first exhibition at Gagosian in New York, DWELVE: Goosebumps on Memory, illustrates this evolution with more dynamic and complex works. These new works layer gestural marks into dense, complex surfaces that appear to exist in both spatial and temporal dimensions. Fadojudimi penetrates and immerses herself into the canvas, her movements capturing the eternal layering and rewriting of memory and experience. This existential layering extends into a series of drawings on paper and her vivid journals, which record her daily impressions as an extension of her body and mind.
The interplay of different color gradients and tones in Fadojutimi’s work creates a palpable tension between layers and traces, which alternately harmonize or conflict. This dynamic reflects the conflicting ideas, inputs, and emotions our brains face as they process overlapping events in our internal and external worlds. Some canvases are immersed in nocturnal or oceanic tones, evoking the depths of the subconscious or the planes of the celestial body, while others radiate warmth and airiness, channeling the terrestrial brilliance of the sun. This fluid rise and fall—from otherworldly dimensions to earthly grounding—may explain the goosebumps her work evokes, a visceral reaction to its powerful resonance.
Fadojudimi’s orchestration of marks and color sensations form a rich palimpsest of how memory and the mind really work. Her abstractions vividly capture the physical, temporal, psychological and energetic experiences of our reality and layer them into vibrant compositions. As DWELVE: Goosebumps on Memory approaches its final weeks, we sat down with the artist to discuss how this latest work reflects her ongoing exploration of identity, emotion, and experience through the language of abstraction.
Abstraction can come in different approaches: one that is more spiritual and lyrical, tending to distill feelings akin to poetry or music composition, and another that is more expressive and physical, based on gesture in the transition from intention to movement and intuition. Which do you think best describes your approach?
This is the first time I’ve heard these two methods defined as separate languages. I hope my paintings oscillate between these approaches and blur the lines, like a kind of abstract impressionism. My work hovers between the descriptions you have given me and I hope it highlights some of the unique qualities of my pictorial language.
The title of the exhibition, “Goosebumps in Memory,” seems to hint at the connection between these paintings and the process of memory. Does it reflect this connection?
My practice aspires to express and translate a more ephemeral way of questioning identity, attempting to blur and merge lived experiences into a permanent visual dialogue through the language of painting. Through this exhibition I wanted to capture the essence of my notebooks and how they become a visual diary that, for me, translates into daily curiosity and acceptance of daily emotions and environmental changes that I hope to reflect on again and exist in it. These paintings capture those “goosebumps” worthy events that I want to permanently ponder with the viewer and delve deeper into the discussions and discourse they create through color, form and mood.
In reassembling some inner poetic landscape, your work always maintains a certain abstract musicality created by the seemingly chaotic accumulation of marks, ultimately finding a harmonious balance in the final work. Can you tell us a little bit about the process behind these pieces?
Every painting starts differently because I have a very open and diverse approach to painting. My pictorial language blossoms from experiments with liquids, which are the main component of the work besides paint. I might start with a drawing, transferring its essence to the canvas as a starting point, and then, as I begin to respond to the drawing as a separate work, other drawings will permeate the work as notes. Some paintings don’t even start as sketches. It might start with a reference to composition, color palette, or something I’ve seen recently that caught my attention.
Your work proceeds through an intense but largely spontaneous, potentially endless accumulation of painterly gestures and brushstrokes. How do you decide when a painting is finished?
I feel like a painting is complete when I spend more time with my work as a viewer rather than as an artist. Sometimes you can’t help but spend time working instead of painting. It will grab your attention. It is at that moment that I decide if something is missing and if not, I will leave the job. I feel that the qualities I look for in each piece help me understand when the work is finished, by asking myself what I want to get out of the work, but more importantly, I believe there is always a moment when an artist must relinquish their role Go to work.
