Victoria Miro, London
Full of giddying detail and unfathomable mystery, these large, luxurious and deeply complex paintings are among the most beguiling works the artist has ever made
Cloven-hoofed, carnal and knowing, the devil is prominent in all seven of Chris Ofili’s suite of large-scale and deeply complex paintings, The Seven Deadly Sins. As much pagan fertility god as father of lies and temptation, the devil, half-hidden in the undergrowth, lounging in plain sight, or just smelling the flowers, he – and perhaps sometimes she – is everywhere. Sometimes, we just catch a glint of those pearlescent horns, the swish of a snaking tail, which makes its serpentine way through a sensual world of natural abundance and luxuriant growth.
Looking at these new paintings by Ofili, your eye slides and drifts, trying to catch hold, but it keeps on slipping and gets pulled under, caught by currents and undertows and dragged around. Ofili captures your sight and makes you aware of the act of your own seeing. Bridget Riley does this, too, in a very different way. Every mark, every dot or sinuous line in Ofili’s painting is deliberate, the result of a conscious touch or series of touches. Every inch clamours for attention. Although rich and dense, most of these works are thinly, almost transparently painted, till suddenly, in one that recalls Fragonard’s rococo The Swing, there’s a swerve to thickly applied, clotted opacity. The Seven Deadly Sins are paintings in constant transition: between surface and depth, figure and foliage, light and dark; between mythology and religion, the sacred and profane.
