Utopia Editions: Tunji Adeniyi-Jones

This hand-drawn stone lithograph by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones is the artist’s first collaboration with David Zwirner’s fine art print publisher, Utopia Editions.

The work, Adeniyi-Jones’s first lithograph, features abstract depictions of figures in small groups or pairs that are characteristic of the artist’s fluid, rhythmic compositions.

sunrisers

Tunji Adeniyi-Jones

Sunrisers, 2022

Five-color lithograph on Rives BFK white paper

42 x 29 5/8 inches (106.7 x 75.3 cm)
Framed: 43 1/2 x 31 1/4 inches (110.5 x 79.4 cm)
Edition of 40, 6 AP

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Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sunrisers, 2022 (detail)

Featuring curving figures that appear suspended in mid-motion, Adeniyi-Jones’s large-scale lithograph recalls celebratory dancing and invokes the repetitive movement of ritualized ceremonial processes.

The artist, who was born in London to Nigerian parents and has lived in both the United Kingdom and the United States, often centers his work around notions of identity and views the body as a powerful vehicle for storytelling that transcends boundaries and borders.

Adeniyi-Jones worked with Andrew Mockler of Jungle Press Editions, a small independent print shop in Brooklyn, to create Sunrisers, the artist’s first lithograph. Photo by Rafael Rios

The figures in my work are expressions of my identity and there is something very rewarding about using the body as a vehicle for storytelling.
—Tunji Adeniyi-Jones

Sunrisers was made using stone lithography, a technique popularized in the 1800s in which the artist draws on a slab of limestone using a greasy crayon.

Adeniyi-Jones’s broad range of references includes mythology, Yoruba culture, cubism, and pop art.

Sunrisers derives from twentieth-century West African art, including the work of Nigerian artists Bruce Onobrakpeya and Olu Amoda, and in particular Ben Enwonwu’s Negritude series, which explores the anti-colonial cultural and political ideology of the 1930s movement of the same name.

Ben Enwonwu, Negritude, 1985. © The Ben Enwonwu Foundation 2022

Adeniyi-Jones has said the experience of drawing on the limestone, which has a particular softness and texture to its surface, influenced the sense of depth in his newest body of paintings. Photo by Rafael Rios

The artist often explores his imagery through studies in ink pen, watercolor, or graphite on paper, seen here at his workspace at Jungle Press Editions. Photo by Rafael Rios

Adeniyi-Jones draws with a greasy crayon on a limestone slab as part of the stone lithography process, which enables an artist to draw on a surface rather than working in relief. Most lithography stones come from a single quarry, limiting the number in existence. Jungle Press Editions holds some of the largest stones in New York, providing Adeniyi-Jones the opportunity to work at this scale. Photo by Rafael Rios

Adeniyi-Jones made his line drawing on the stone using a greasy crayon. Mockler then moistened the stone with water and rolled oil-based ink onto it. The greasy areas of the stone where the artist has drawn pick up the ink, while the wet parts do not. Photo by Rafael Rios

Mockler pulls an early trial proof of Sunrisers. Photo by Rafael Rios

Adeniyi-Jones signs his Sunrisers print at Jungle Press Editions. Photo by Rafael Rios

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Utopia Editions: Tunji Adeniyi-Jones

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