Leah Stuhltrager

Laurent Ajina likes to put things in our way. Rather than present the obvious, Ajina implies the abstract - or obscure - physicality of objects with minimal drawings. His unidentifiable linear compositions reflect the familiar. Lines are out of context yet construct visual references within viewers’ imaginations. One’s mind reverts to seeing a car, a room’s interior, a landscape...Conjuring innumerable and personal cultural references within an individual viewer is what inspires Ajina’s work, giving it a purpose. Separating meaning presented on canvas, paper or in his sculptures from meaning derived from the viewer, Ajina’s lines visually reference Oscar Wilde’s statement, »All art is quite useless.«


Leah Stuhltrager, director of Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.