Event Date: 8th May – 3rd June, 2017
Venue details: Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery | 533 Old York Rd, London SW18 1TG
Organiser: Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery
Event website: “Quo Vadis?” with Dawit Abebe
Event cost: Free
“What are the consequences of the journey that contemporary man has embarked on in the name of development, growth, transformation, urbanisation, industrialisation, and now globalisation? We are all striving for a pristine world where concrete jungles reign and human communication is mediated only through advanced technology.” – Dawit Abebe
In Ethiopian artist Dawit Abebe’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, he investigates the impact of man’s actions vis-à-vis nature. Quo Vadis?, at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, presents a new body of work, building on Abebe’s signature collage painting investigations of the devastating effects of urbanisation and industrial ‘progress’.
With an interest in the realm of technology and its impact on human behaviour, Abebe has long examined the role that belief systems, as well as mankind’s propensity to search for knowledge, have played on society – particularly in the fields of privacy, alienation and materiality. As technologies advance and develop to bigger and better levels of sophistication, Abebe’s interest has lain in the impact these technologies have not only on the environment, but also on human behaviour. His large, colourful paintings have become recognisable for their iconic figures, painted in thick impasto with impressionist overtones, their backs turned to the viewer. These backs often carry on them the weight not just of personal, individual histories, but of collective history.

