The seek for peace, security and perspective was entrance and centre for a lot of artists in 2025, however Treasured Okoyomon discovered all three in a uncommon place: behind the controls of a propeller airplane, 1000’s of metres above floor. “Not everybody needs to be in a Cessna 120 feeling the vibration of each little factor that’s taking place, however for me, it actually resets my nervous system,” they instructed The Artwork Newspaper in early December, including with mischief of their voice: “I like extremes, so I don’t thoughts issues that may kill me.”
The dialog was jump-started by an October walkthrough of It’s necessary to have ur fangs out on the finish of the world (till 17 January), Okoyomon’s first exhibition with the up to date gallery Mendes Wooden DM. The present, staged on the gallery’s everlasting area in Paris, highlights the artist’s increasing observe. It contains sculptures of manga-inflected bears the scale of huge canine, artist-designed wallpaper and a brand new fable written by Okoyomon, whose poetry is the bedrock of their artistic output.
However it’s the present’s three dioramas that immediately invoke the artist’s expertise as a leisure pilot. Painted in oils on glass panes and mounted in gentle containers, the scenes depict a burning pastoral world populated by an anthropomorphic solar, flowers and extra bears. They mix a few of the core themes—our industrially poisoned ecology, the pure world’s resilience and the dire penalties for humanity—that underpinned Okoyomon’s installations on the 2022 Venice Biennale, a 2025 solo present at Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz and elsewhere.
“Once I was making the dioramas, a variety of the sky examine footage I might tackle my cellphone, which I’m simply doing whereas I’m flying. I’m all the time witnessing and needing to archive,” Okoyomon says. “Sure issues you may solely see from the sky: how colors mix collectively, how the panorama appears to be like.”
Okoyomon discovered as a lot as an adolescent. Their household relocated to suburban West Chester, Ohio, after stints within the UK (the place the artist was born), Nigeria (the place their mother and father grew up) and Houston. “I had skilled so many alternative worlds. Then, rapidly, I used to be in Ohio”—a spot they have been “not entranced with”.
In change for working in the one Nigerian restaurant in Cincinnati, nonetheless, Okoyomon’s mom agreed to pay for flying classes on the close by (and since-closed) Blue Ash Airport. It was a salve and a thrill; Okoyomon bought their pilot’s licence earlier than their driver’s licence. Currently, they’ve primarily flown once they return to Ohio to go to their mom. They’re nonetheless trying to find the best small airport close to their dwelling and studio in Brooklyn.
Flying however threaded the 2 places collectively by way of the artist’s observe. The transfer east compelled Okoyomon to pen a collection of poems referred to as Sky Songs, and later to shoot a video work during which they learn one entry from the cockpit mid-flight. “I wrote the start half of those poems after I moved to New York about making an attempt to really feel rooted or grounded,” they are saying. “I felt untethered, and in a method the one place I felt secure was within the sky, which is form of loopy.”
Okoyomon’s Our love is a blue prompt and forward-looking sky (2025), a lightbox impressed by the artist’s expertise of flying planes
Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wooden DM; picture: Nicolas Brasseur
There’s a very brief listing of artists who’ve doubled as pilots. Probably the most outstanding is James Turrell, the titan of sunshine and celestial artwork. He discovered to fly by the age of 16, rescued Buddhist monks from Tibet by air through the Vietnam Warfare and has taken to the skies repeatedly over the a long time since. (He found Roden Crater, the extinct volcano that has turn into the location of his still-unfinished magnum opus within the Arizona desert, from the cockpit.)
Extra widespread are the artists who’ve been fascinated with flight from the bottom. After being drafted to serve within the Second World Warfare, Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97) utilized to coach as an Air Pressure pilot however was reassigned. Panamarenko (1940-2019) centred his storied profession on drawings, sculptures and quasi-functional objects pursuing flight in numerous kinds. Okoyomon summarised the latter—with apparent admiration—as “an actual weirdo” whose “loopy stunning” contraptions have been an ongoing inspiration.
Then there may be the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and his 1995 Helicopter string quartet, a chunk that interweaves anxious string scales, tremolos and vocalisations with the chugging blades of 4 stay, functioning helicopters. It’s Okoyomon’s important reference level for his or her “dream of constructing an insane opera with planes—someplace within the mountains, someplace tough”. It’s the kind of mission that requires taking the lengthy view. However the place higher to seek out it than within the pilot’s seat?
Treasured Okoyomon: It’s necessary to have ur fangs out on the finish of the world, Mendes Wooden DM, till 17 January
