Oghenekevbe Otobo is a Fine Artist working out of Wimbledon Art Studios. He graduated from Central Saint Martins University of the Arts London with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art.

Kevbe, as he is known for short, has had exhibitions at Hoxton Square, London, alongside artists such as Damien Hirst & Tracey Emin and four Wimbledon Art Fairs in 2023 and 2024.

Last Wednesday, Kevbe spoke extensively about his works, career, philosophy and childhood with the Arts Editor, OSA MBONU-AMADI at the Ilupeju office of Vanguard Newspaper in Lagos:

We could have conducted this interview virtually on WhatsApp as I suggested to you when we spoke on phone, but you opted for a face-to-face interview. Is that an admission that there’s something important in the physical space that is lacking in the digital?

Exactly! There’s a human connection in the physical, the emergence of ideas is lost when we meet digitally. There’s something that is lost when someone lectures, because when you’re lecturing there’s no conversationalism involved in lecturing.

For example, if I had written everything down, I’d have to submit to you a book. It would be essays and essays, and in those essays, you won’t get to understand my actual personality behind my thought process or the connection with the materials that I am speaking of. So that’s why I believe in the physical. We can actually sit down, speak, look eye to eye, discuss. That way, we got to question ideas, put forward new ideas, and really reach an understanding that may be lost when just reading your texts. So that’s the reason I came forward like this.

So, now about your digital works… 

With my digital works, although I taught myself how to do 3D modeling and 3D rendering and learn how to really present works in digital space, this was forced upon me. When I was in Central Saint Martins University of the Arts, London, one of the best in London, the aim of my degree was to work towards the big art shop. Unfortunately, in the last 6 months of me being in that university, Corona Virus hit. The physical aspect of my work was completely lost. So that’s why I was forced to learn by myself how I can present what I wanted to present as real installation for people to interact with and speak to me about these ideas. I had to find a way to present it digitally. That’s the digital aspect of those works there. They were intended to be actual installations that people can touch and interact with properly.

For example, I made one of them; it’s a suspended wall between two platforms. A lot of my technological pieces have references… technological patterns I have discovered called the walking through walls system. So, this walking through walls pattern is essentially what a lot of my work is, they say things such as the human being is a hyperspace energy being within a physical body, which is a lot of technological jargons for saying the human is a spiritual being in a physical setting. So, in that piece, I was going to present this pattern, present a wall, a very solid object, and ask people to follow this pattern and attempt to walk through the wall.

So this is why a lot of my installation pieces have to do with real experiences, touching things and trying these strange ideas based on these strange patterns…. So, what I believe art is really useful for now is to bring people (together)… it’s almost like a language, a language that breaks the barriers of walls. To bring these ideas forward and make people actually interact with ideas and concepts in real-time, rather than just theorizing, or imagining or writing essays, etc.

We all know the story of the Tower of Babel, which says humans were building a tower trying to reach God, and then God in turn confused them in language. Although I may not actually believe the story, I believe in the philosophy behind it. Our language is a barrier towards our actual ideas and our actual intentions behind it. For example, I have a lot of thoughts, you have a lot of thoughts; if I could just take my brain power, the brainwave and give to you, it will be a lot easier; no words need to be said. But when we are trying to explain ourselves, we find ourselves using words that are connected to other meanings that almost dilute the initial ideas behind them.

So that’s why I think art is one of the true forms, it’s almost like a medium of pushing your brain activity that does not filter down the brain activity so much. For example, I could speak so much, which I do a lot in my practice, or I could show people simple symbols and simple illustration and then speak about it, then in turn make them understand a lot more. So I really use my art as a visual tool to explain a lot of the ideas behind my work.

How do you sell these artworks that have their existence only on the digital space?

Illustration pieces are not to be sold. Illustration pieces are to be…like the one I created, I created to destroy it, so it no longer exists, which is also part of the philosophical idea behind the work, which is that the now is the most important thing, and that life is but a fleeting moment, that you must focus on the present.

A lot of my work deals with reality as a whole, like the holistic view of the world, where I try to not exclude any part of human history, and I try to see human history as a progression of the evolution of consciousness. The way I put it is that every account you have like the account of spirits, ghosts, strange phenomena, cannot be dismissed, they must be explained somehow, because our conscious perception of reality is different from our physical perception of reality…. 

So that is the kind of ideas I try to touch with my work…. it’s like a plethora of scientific experiments that I like to tie with ancient philosophy, that I like to try and build all together to get this holistic view of the universe which essentially says that the human being is a conscious being, hyperspace being, but there’s other being within this physical body, and that this reality is not the base reality, is not the only reality of which everything is from.

Is that why you have to use things like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, etc., to explain your works and ideas, because they are intangible, and not ideas that can easily be captured on physical canvas with paints and brushes?

I believe that our technology now is reaching a point where the technology is almost getting to a spirituality where we are creating this new paradigm, the new reality, so to speak, where people can interact with things, not just in the physical, but in this other world that we are not acquainted with. So, I see that as a parallel or a metaphor with our own reality. May be there’s another world of another reality that is working behind us…. So, I believe that this physical world is but a reflection, a filtering of ideas from some other place….  

For example, da Vinci is very consumed by the idea of the golden ratio and the perfection of nature and reality. So here, thinking about different dimensions, again, dimensions work in tune with da Vinci’s idea of the golden ration.

So, we are getting to a point in science and philosophy where I believe we must converge the separate fields so that we can converse and actually understand the next step of human advancement. So, that’s basically the whole crux of what I am trying to do through various means. Same with the idea of how I said words filter down ideas. In my practice, I am trying to find the best way to explain this very concept, these intuitive philosophies of humanity.

What drew you to art as a child? And looking at your O’ Level results, you were good in Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics and all those science subjects. You had ‘A’s in almost all of them. Why did you choose art? You could have easily become a good scientist.

Since I was a child, the things I have been good at are math and art. That’s why Da Vinci was my favorite artist. When I was very young and preparing to go to England, they made me do a lot tests. One of the tests I fell in love with was all these non-verbal reasoning tests. They show you a set of 3 objects and say which is the next one, a, b or c? So, I found myself obsessed with this way of thinking, of seeing connections between objects, ideas, etc. I used to come from school, sit in front of the television, put on cartoons and try and draw the same cartoons I like.

So, I was constantly drawing as a child. I don’t know what really led me towards drawing and painting. Luckily, while I was here, my school here (in Lagos), St. Saviours, I actually saw this talent and when I was applying to go to overseas for prep school, I actually ended up getting an art scholarship. And the same thing happened again, from my prep school to secondary school.

So, my parents were almost forced to understand that I am really into arts and there’s really something here too. But even when I was in secondary school, art wasn’t the main goal. I was leading up to doing something to do with economics, because I have always been good in math. So, after I did my IGCSE I stayed in my school, Charterhouse, and I was doing further math, which is the normal A Level math, and then economics and art. So, double math, economics and art were my subjects at Charterhouse. While I was there, I was asking my teachers, ‘how can I go to an art university?’ Because my parents wanted me to do economics, but deep down me I knew wanted to do art. And they (my teachers) said ‘no, no, no we won’t let you apply for art university, because people who apply for art university they must do foundation course.’

So I left that school, and I went straight into foundation course, did a double foundation course in Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts. Then I also completed my A Levels in a different school. I did my AS and A Levels in one year, all at once just to have all the qualifications I can have to be able to study art in the university.

Then I got into Central Saint Martins, and that was how I got to where I am now. Luckily, by working hard and showing my parents… by getting into such a prestigious arts school, they allowed me to pursue the dream. So, there has always been a fight between the art and the math. But what I found through my own artist in practice is that I can never get rid of the math. So now I am in a point where I am trying to combine my own practice of mathematics and art into one and even adding philosophy to the jargon, add physics to the jargon as well. And now I am finding that what I had thought was so many different fields are actually, I believe, one holistic field of existence of learning about the reality…. I believe art is a tool of scientific and spiritual investigation….

How do you make money from your art?     

                     

At the moment I am realizing that my artworks seem to be for a gallery setting, because a lot of people, when they come and see my art, they really say, ‘oh, I love this, it’s a great experience. But it’s not so much artwork that’s so attainable to put on your walls. So that’s why I am looking forward to a solo exhibition so as to really give people these different experiences… I am trying to push out art that has more behind it. That’s why in the future I will be probably selling tickets to exhibition shows and showing real experience where it involves sounds, visuals, techniques, installations as well all to all accompany these types of ideas. Although I am an oil painter by profession, I don’t just like to stick to that alone. I like to try and see which is the best way for me to show these ideas, whether it be illustrations, whether it be digitally, in person or even in sound installations, room installations, light installations. So, my practice is evolving as we speak. I also ask myself; how do I make money from all these. It’s a question I ask myself all the time.  

Do you think all these art on the digital landscape, with AR, VR and now, AI-generated artworks – do you see them as threats to traditional art forms on canvas?

When the creation of photography happened people were scared and said, ‘Oh, what’s the point of painting?’ However, what we found by the end is that any technology that an artist finds he will use it as a tool to enhance art. What we find about art is that it’s more than the image, it’s more than the 2D, 3D objects, and it’s more than any physical thing. What drives art, in my own opinion, is really the ideas and the conscious thoughts behind it. You know we don’t love Leonardo da Vinci because he painted a man like this, we love Leonardo da Vinci because of his ideas and ways he looked at reality, the way he interacted with reality…. So that’s why I do not fear for the rise of AI, etc. A true artist will just use anything as a tool to further his own actual ideas. So, if AI is needed to explain a certain idea, then it can be used. I think everything should be seen as tools to use. Because as we develop as humanity there will always be the next big invention, but the truth is that I think artistic tool is like an inherent part of being human, an inherent part of human consciousness. So, that’s the way I like to think about those things.

So, how would you summarize your philosophy?  

What I believe is that there’s a difference between information and understanding. What I always tell people is that you, modern man, you have more informational knowledge than any of the great philosophers of the past. Meaning if you could speak to Plato, you could tell him about the perception of the planet, you could tell him about the existence of black holes. All those are information that will make him think you’re so intelligent. However, I believe that what we lack, versus our ancient past, is that we lack understanding. I separate these two things – information and understanding. And now I think we are at a point where humanity really has to look at information that have already been discovered and start to try and gather true understanding. There is no amount of information that will grant you higher understanding. Understanding comes through real contextual practice with our reality, contextual experiences and thoughts with what this information we have interacted with, what they really mean, what they really intuitively mean to us. So, for humanity to progress, we must now look back and try and really gather true understanding about our reality, not just more information. The true thing we are missing is the understanding of what being conscious really is.