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Sculpture Installation
Fibreglass, Lead, Cathedral Stained Glass
Dennis Osadebe
2025
In Lagos, a familiar sight punctuates the city’s streets: clusters of white monobloc chairs arranged facing preachers, projectors, or TV screens, marking the temporary boundaries of street church services, where the urban landscape bends to accommodate inhabitants’ spiritual pursuits. Cheap, durable, and endlessly mobile, the monobloc chair represents a form of democratic design shaped by industrial efficiency rather than artisanal craft.
In MASS (Devotion), Dennis Osadebe transforms this ordinary object into a site of reflection through a new process of Re-compose. Each chair is reimagined with a stained-glass piece patterned with constellations, instigating a tension between the ethereal and the industrial. The stained glass recalls the role of light in cathedrals as a spiritual medium, while the constellation patterns speak to navigation and orientation.
Presented at ART X Lagos 2025, in line with the fair’s theme Imagining Otherwise, No Matter the Tide, MASS (Devotion) is fabricated in fiberglass and reconfigured into a circular, upright installation that assumes a surreal presence. The formation evokes the grammar of devotion itself: the prayer circle, the congregation, and an architectural logic of framing perspective. It invites audiences to encounter art beyond the conventional limits of the fairground—within liminal zones where reflection, gathering, and reimagination take root.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Dennis Osadebe (b. 1991, Lagos) is a Nigerian artist working across painting, sculpture, and installation. Drawing on traditional forms and symbols, he explores how tradition and innovation coexist, creating work that balances vitality with order.
Osadebe studied Business Management at Queen Mary University of London and holds an MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Warwick. Recent solo exhibitions include Forcing Connections, Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris (2025); König Galerie, Berlin (2023); König Galerie, London (2022); GR Gallery, New York (2021); Christopher Moller Gallery, Cape Town (2020); Avenue des Arts, Los Angeles (2019); and Galerie Liusa Wang, Paris (2019). His first institutional solo exhibition was held at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts (MoCADA), New York (2021).
His work has appeared in group exhibitions internationally and at art fairs including NADA, New York, and Frieze, London. Notable projects include THE RULES DO NOT APPLY for The National Gallery, London. He has been featured in campaigns for Louis Vuitton (2021) and the NBA (2023), and has collaborated with Hermès on multiple occasions, most recently a scarf designed for their 2025 Spring Summer Collection.