'There's a kind of fidelity to the past in Richard Ayodeji Ikhide's paintings that has nothing nostalgic about it: it's an operational fidelity, a kind of working method. In his new works—made with egg tempera and now on display at the Victoria Miro Gallery in Venice —these references to distant times intertwine without hierarchies: the spirits of the Yoruba tradition dialogue with those of the Italian Renaissance masters, from whom Ikhide has absorbed gestures, imagery, and a particular sacredness of the sign.'
'For the first time, the Nigerian artist has chosen an ancient, slow, and disciplined technique, bringing him closer to the painters he observes in Italian museums. But in Ikhide, this attention to art history always coexists with an imagery that is never merely historical: his figures have the density of avatars, a suspended physicality bordering on science fiction, as if tradition itself generates its own possible futures.' — Zaira Carrer
