Olasunkanmi Akomolehin: Moments That Shape Us: 225 West 17th Street

Ethan Cohen Gallery is pleased to present Moments That Shape Us, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of Olasunkanmi Akomolehin. Based in Lagos, Nigeria, Akomolehin is known for his psychologically resonant portraiture, creating paintings that move between lived experience and remembered history, rendering intimate scenes that hold the weight of personal emotion, cultural inheritance, and the quiet intensity of everyday life.

 

Rooted in storytelling, Akomolehin’s paintings draw from the narratives he grew up hearing and the visual memories that shaped his sense of self. He often returns to familial recollections, particularly stories shared by his father, alongside experiences of youth, friendship, and the shifting language of style across generations. Afro hair styles, boot-cut trousers, and details of dress serve as visual markers of time and identity, bridging the past and present through figuration.

 

Throughout the exhibition, Akomolehin builds compositions that feel at once tender and emotionally intense, positioning his sitters in moments of pause, conversation, and quiet reflection. His portraits often meet the viewer directly, establishing an intimacy that collapses distance between subject and audience. His figures emerge with clarity and vulnerability, while the surrounding space, at times compressed, at times expansive, heightens the emotional tenor of each scene.

 

A defining element of Akomolehin’s visual language is his use of floral motifs: lush fields of pattern that bloom behind and around his subjects. These vibrant floral backdrops, rendered with a maximalist intensity, are not merely decorative; they operate as atmosphere, memory, and psychological space, suggesting interior worlds as much as physical environments. In their repetition and variation, the floral forms become a kind of visual chorus: a living ground of sensation that frames the portrait and amplifies the emotional presence of the subject.

 

Akomolehin’s practice is deeply personal, yet expansive in its emotional reach. His paintings capture both the struggles and joys of daily life, honoring the beauty found in simple moments, and the ways identity is shaped through accumulation: conversations, pressures, tenderness, and the quiet endurance of memory. As a storyteller and painter, Akomolehin brings sensitivity and clarity to contemporary portraiture, offering works that preserve cultural memory while remaining rooted in the immediacy of lived experience.