“On Rhythmistic Art”
A Future-Primitif Approach to Visual Art.
All images and art are
Copyright 2023 Turtel Onli and other dates.
They may not be remixed
or reproduced for commercial purposes
without a written
agreement with Dr.Turtel Onli, M.A.A.T.
“The art of Turtel Onli is African
Centered. Many who have seen it appear to be confused by it. The
culture conscious African Americans find it unacceptable because it does not
bespeak the “traditional” Africa that they have come to know and love. The
middle-class find it difficult to accept because it is too African and not like
what they have been told is “good art”. Most Rhythm &
Blues...... Hip-Hoppin’ Black Americans do not know about him or his work.
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“Miles Plays Miles”. Actual
proposed album cover illustration. From a private collection. Circa 1975
As I stated earlier, his work is African-Centered. He has termed
his style Rhythmism. He coined the term in 1975 when he created an
illustration for the legendary musician, Miles Davis, and rightly so. The paintings, wearable art, Graphic Novels.
illustrations and performances he creates are alive with RHYTHM.
His work is demonstrative in its force. The colors appear to dance before you. The eyes, the lips, the styles of hair pull you, cajole you, take you in.
“The Rhythmistic Button-Head Bench” Chicago Childrens Museum
permanent collection.
“Bench Mark Functional Artworks”, circa 1995. Navy Pier Chicago.
Detail of “The Naga
Momas”. Oils on wooden panels. Circa 2022
Untitled creative
discharge: Colored pencils. Circa 2016.
The colors are bright, vibrant, steamy as they vaporize into a
thin layer of white heat and back the vibrantly charged colors. The
colors dare you to laugh, to play, to join in the high energy of
life. Life on a higher plane. Life in a new Africa, a futuristic
Africa with a neo-tradition that does not deny itself but digs down into itself
to bare yet a new fruit for the future. This future fruit, a
Rhythmistic one, is an universal fruit to embellish the entire fabric of
humanity.
“Chili Tongue”, watercolors.
Circa 1998.
Universal is mentioned because the reference to Onli’s work being
African Centered and not generally accepted in that community is due to its
power and influence being misunderstood. There
is another community into which Onli has yet to be accepted and that is the
mainstream Art Community.
Hype from the “Rhythmistic Smorgasbord
Exhibition” courtesy of the Box Factory For the Arts, St. Joseph, Michigan.
Featuring selected works from Onli’s “Passion Fruit” and “No Evils”
Rhythmisitc visual art series.
Onli is representative of a new age, a forward-thinking age. An
age that has a vision of an Africanization of the future by an Africa that is
viable in the world scheme of things. And a world unified by its
universal values.
Hype from the 2021 Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s blockbu
ster group exhibition and the solo exhibition at stately Gordon Parks Hall’s Corvus Gallery of the University of Chicago, both featuring Onli’s Rhythmistic Future-Primitif visual art.
The classic disparities between Blacks and Whites and specifically
between White and Black males stumbles blindly over into the Art World. The
continuance of this practice inhibits the flow of contributions by Black
artists, creating voids of sterility. This disparity curtails the
universals that we as a culture look for in the world of innovative artists
like Onli.
“NOG Banking”. Acrylics on Linen. Circa 2015. The NOG Nu
series.
The works of artists like Turtel Onli must be endeared, appropriately
reviewed and appreciated because their universals will rhythmically pull at the
ancestral memories that continue to make us human. We can no
longer afford the limitations of Euro-Centric Art as the only contemporary
modernistic approach to unleash the potential power of Art. Onli and
his Rhythmistic Future-Primitif movement give the art critics, patrons, curators
and makes the opportunity to expand their concept of the universal.”
1989: Marcia Hicks, PhD.
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