Travelling hopefully with Kyalo

In abstract art, less is more. And Justus Kyalo certainly gives you less.

Almost entirely non-figurative, the work of this Kenyan painter is pared to the bone, and then scraped back a little more. Seldom exuberant, each mark is carefully considered, driven by a compulsion to describe and understand.

Kyalo’s pictures often contain lush passages of pure painterly pleasure, but they remain driven by intellect.

These cerebral works can be difficult to understand, probably because as humans we seem to be programmed to spend most of our lives seeking narrative meanings.

Yet, if you take away the narrative, you are free to focus on the emotional impact of the work — and that is created through colours, textures, shapes and sizes.

Sometimes the artist might leave us clues as to the works’ narrative content… traces of a presence, links to ourselves that flicker and fall like faces in the fire.

Really abstract art is just another way of seeing, one that is more refined than most — reductive, at once simplified and complex.

Here, as with all abstract art, we are dealing not with how well the artist can capture the likeness of a face or a landscape, or describe the weight of a ship at sea, but something that is far more subtle and much more difficult. For without the familiar props of figures, trees, lakes and buildings, the abstractionist has to evoke a mood, or capture the spirit of a place or a belief; share with us an emotional response to things that are precious.

Abstract painting is music in two dimensions.

So, how good is Kyalo the musician? Is there a theme that excites and harmony to please us?

Certainly his spare imagery is the epitome of simplicity and as Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

A good place to start with Kyalo’s paintings — the first suggestions of a narrative if you like — is the title of his exhibition at the Alliance Francaise, Nairobi, on until May 31.

It is titled Portals and Trails, and the 22 mixed-media paintings on show deal with the artist’s exploration of his Kamba roots.

The Kamba are a people who undertook long journeys to trade, particularly to the Coast. These are the historic trails, their secrets passed down the generations, while the portals are the gateways that awaited them at their destination.

And so we have the theme, which is in itself a metaphor… journeys to and from the Coast on secret pathways relate to the interior journeys we all take through life.

The names of the individual paintings offer further help, although that is complicated by the fact that Kyalo’s titles tend to be allusive, and, like the Kiswahili language itself, dense with layered meanings.

Thus Mjulie Mume Wako Sukari, the name of the signature painting of the exhibition — the one reproduced on the posters and flyers — translates as Know how much sugar your husband takes (in his tea), which has as many metaphorical meanings as you may care to imagine.

I expect to see it one day printed on a khanga.

The meaning I prefer is Know yourself, which is sympathetic to the central image of three portals, each of which leads into another. The more you know, the more there is to discover.

There are three paintings with the title Shika Njia, which could be Take this path, or less prosaically Choose your (own) way. Here the path is scratched into the paint surface and seems to be a decreasing series of eccentric ellipses. If this is the Path of Life, I understand the meaning completely.

Another favourite from a hall full of delights is Chambani.

I am told this refers to the part of the sea near the shore, and is presumably what awaits a traveller to the Coast. It is a ravishingly beautiful work; a delicate emerald trail, a twisting thread across a field of the deepest chocolate.

Kyalo is taking us with him on life’s journeys and like him we are unlikely to arrive at our final destination until we are released from the quest by death.
Inevitably, I am reminded of that Chinese proverb: It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi