Artsplit presents two symbolic works of two great artists of Nigeria for its August auction. Placed side by side, both artpieces testify to the elliptical loop of sunlight via orbital pathway, from dawn to dusk, till the event of twilight wherein mythologies and folkloric imaginary, harnesses luminance to project its cast of eerie characters. Misty Morning and Twilight (Ogiza) demonstrate continuity of days and expectation of hope implied in the embrace of light. In their separate aesthetic jurisdiction of luminosity lies illustration of lifestyles, culture and spiritual resilience, all bound into a testimony of the living. Individually, the two pieces evoke the cadence whereby monolithic composition cloaked in shadows awakes evocatively as light begins to chisel relief and to display forms in comatose or writhing poses. Voids and surfaces emerge at the suggestion of light filaments pulsing in lanterns, fireplaces, streetlamps and the overarching moonlight.

Ironically, the serene beauty of the outdoors during misty mornings and twilight evenings as illustrated in the artworks occurs during the hours people spend indoors. Besides, the photogenic propensities of the sceneries are rendered incognito by overhang of mist and twilight respectively. Such views remain a gray-area until Abiodun Olaku and El Dragg Okwoju began to ponder on the hidden symbols in the gradients or scales of grayness caused by the dramatic interaction of light and darkness. Their superb painterly depiction of landscape-view in little lights underlines chromatic coolness and textural charm of forms delicately rendered in subtle hues of colors and shades of light, but also triggers metaphorical similarities with the introspection of life and hope within variable limits of the jurisdiction of light. With apolitical objectivity, the two artworks can be viewed as travail of visibility against backdrop of prevailing darkness, or the enforcement of clarity. Empathy of the metaphoric lens reveals the plight of realism, and recognizes undertones of painful invisibility under the overbearing policies of the overhanging mist or twilight. Persistence of such obscurity infers the continuum of the rat-race, due in part that a typical underdog is hypothetically cloaked in the shadows of insignificance and so continually struggles against undertow of luminal fate that subverts or mocks hope of salvation by revelation. Hypothesis of being when examined according to the crucial importance of an individual's visibility in the immediate social environment, shows why the hope of survival is represented by yet another brand-new day.