Tag: Brandon Ndife

Brandon Ndife’s practice is grounded in vital materiality that considers matter as lively and metamorphic, bound to forces and encounters that push and pull, tumbling ceaselessly into rambunctious states of transformation. 

Biomorphic clusters of industrial and organic materials form viscid assemblages that pulse with emergence. Fragments of household ephemera—ceramic plates, a baby stroller, a mangled folding chair, knobs of furniture—wade through gloops of paint and resin that seem to twitch as they meld and mutate, destabilizing their original significations and meaning. Ghostly drawings of flowers and plants in states of decay serve as vanitas gestures, whispers of matter. Awnings installed along the gallery’s walls resemble vignettes or stage sets, evoking an eerie sensation in their obsoleteness. 

The urban topography of Los Angeles lends itself to Ndife’s exhibition and ongoing interest in what Mike Davis calls “the radical politics of shade.” It calls attention to urban environmental inequality, which, in Los Angeles, can be traced quite clearly in a satellite map of the city where shade and vegetation are visibly lacking in historically redlined neighborhoods. Ndife considers how inequity manifests in matter itself, calling attention to the forces of injustice and agency in which we are inherently implicated. This emphasis on the sentience of urban material brings to mind the legacy of the assemblage artists based in Watts in the 60s, such as Noah Purifoy and John Outterbridge. While Ndife doesn’t reference this legacy directly, his practice evokes ideas that expand the field of assemblage, questioning how we think about and engage with materials and systems on macro and micro levels. Theorist Karen Barad’s words compliment this point, stating that “matter itself in its very materiality is differentially constituted as an implosion/explosion: a superposition of all possible histories constituting each bit. The very stuff of the world is a matter of politics. Matter is not only political all the way up and all the way down; it has all matter of matters inside it. Planetary geopolitics inside a morsel–a strange topology, an implosion/explosion of no small matter.” 

Matthew Brown
712 N La Brea Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90038
On view through January 21, 2023