To imitate or to create, to match or to surpass nature: reality rendered truer than reality itself.
Joseph Chiemerie (b. 1999, Lagos, Nigeria) is a self-taught artist and one of the young protagonists of Nigerian hyperrealism. Beginning in adolescence with pencil and charcoal portraiture, he developed a photorealist language built on two distinct levels of composition: figures and objects in the foreground rendered with hyperrealistic precision, set against blurred backgrounds estranged from their primary context. His delicate, soft drawing and pastel palette temper the virtuosity of the technique with a quiet, suspended atmosphere. Recently his practice has extended from charcoal and pencil to oil painting, presenting images of a contemporary, self-assured Africa. He exhibits with Black Liquid Art Gallery, Rome.