Goodman Gallery London is proud to present ruby onyinyechi amanze’s DUETS; an exhibition of new works on paper, marking the artist’s fourth exhibition with the gallery.

DUETS expands on the artist’s decade-long commitment to the discipline of drawing. Using a palette of seven recurring visual elements, amanze creates an expansive world that pushes against the idea of narrative. With no hierarchy, the seven include: architecture, birds, ada, bike, swimming pool and audre, with the final element being the paper itself. For this series, positioned as a choreographer of sorts, amanze experiments with placing these elements into pairings.

amanze’s practice pulls inspiration from the spatial negotiations found in design and the three-dimensional practices of dance and architecture. As part of an ongoing exploration, the malleability of space remains the primary antagonist.

A nameless, chimeric universe is simultaneously positioned between nowhere and everywhere. Each “duet” of two elements is suspended in an infinite space with no gravitational axis as part of the artist’s attempt to push the boundaries of depth and scale. Incorporating materials from graphite, to ink, to photo transfers, amanze slices and cuts imagery to create spaces and shapes where the elements meet.

Why pairings? “In my studio practice, I frequently and arbitrarily create restrictions for myself to work with. It is a numbers game, a puzzle of sorts, making drawings through a process of parts to a whole or a whole into parts” - amanze. In earlier work, the sudo-human figures of ada and audre featured as main characters. This series explores what it means to place the two selected elements on a level playing field and to reject a hierarchy between them.

For this presentation, amanze considers the physical boundaries of the gallery as part of ongoing research into how to interrupt and play with space. This extends to engaging with the corners of the room and the floor.