Olalekan B. Jeyifous received a BArch from Cornell University. Until
recently, he was a Senior Designer at dbox Inc, a creative agency utilizing
digital media to produce inspired visual communications. At dbox, his
work ranged from creating video animations for Michael Arad and Peter
Walker's winning design for the WTC Memorial, branding imagery from worldwide
campaigns and media installations. Jeyifous exhibited his work at the
Studio Museum of Harlem and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. He was
awarded a fellowship by the New York Foundation of the Arts for his project
Dolor: The Circuitous City, a series of architectural stills examining
possible interpretations of Theodore Roethke's Dolor.
As an artist who relies heavily on his background as "architect,"
his fascination lies with the potential of the design process to be
exploited as myth and/or narrative, whether fictional, symbolic,
or literal. To this end, Jeyifous' work does not seek to assert formal
solutions to spatial problems, but instead exists as a vehicle for
social critique and establishing unique visual languages. The marriage
of traditional modes of representation (sketching, painting, collage,
etc.) to an exacting digital aesthetic continues to provide refreshing
ways to explore cultural phenomena through imagined visions.
Interview date: April 2005
Interviewed by Ka-Man Tse
LMCC: So tell me about your process. How
do you work?
Lek: I begin with a vague idea, and it may just
be a word, a word that I like. For instance, with LMCC, I
was thinking I wanted to do something that had to do with urban mapping. So
I started looking at different maps, subway maps, maps of Manhattan,
and then I started making random interventions into them, and then,
you know… I make one move and that informs on the next. And
I follow. I’ve been working on this formally and intuitively. I
work with the general idea in my mind and as I create visually more
things, it begins to develop it’s own logic, and it begins to
make more sense to me. This is working from the digital medium and
so forth. So first I’m pushing, pushing this little idea
along, but then I’m beginning to understand exactly where it’s
going… I’m reading into it, developing it, and then developing
it further. If that makes sense…
LMCC: Yes. The work takes on a life of its
own and then it becomes more about a relationship to your project,
your work…. Tell me about your influences. What
sources do you draw from the most? Any interdisciplinary influences? Music
is an integral part of this video…
Lek: Yeah. I’m not too familiar with names and
themes and theories so forth. I’m real visual. I
work by osmosis with the things that I like. I love Japanimation. I
like those old school Russian posters, the Russian Constructivists. I
use a lot of bold red, in fact a lot of my stuff has red. I love
subway maps, the London Underground, Tokyo’s map. Things
like that. Everything from very crazy random hairy stuff, to
very simple, extremely minimal plain, graphic kind of things. And
I try to strike a balance between that. I like all different
types of architecture, from crazy, crazy stuff like Lebbeus Woods. He’s
this guy that does this crazy conceptual kind of architecture. I
like a lot of stuff by Tadao Ando, very simple beautiful charcoal drawings
and so forth. In my work I’m kind of torn... I like to
do crazy stuff, I like to throw a lot of stuff in there, but then I
like a lot of clean crisp minimal stuff as well.
LMCC: So how would you describe your style…
Lek: Blatantly esoteric. [laughs heartily] I
kind of do it. And throw a lot of indicators in there. I
find that people look at my work and kind of… It has a
sort of incoherency to it. Which is somewhat on purpose, somewhat
just me not really, you know… I have a bunch of ideas… That’s
all the minimal fighting the other thing… I have a lot of random
ideas and I put them all in there. But because it’s architecture,
it’s sort of hard for people to look at because they want to
understand exactly what’s going on. There’s a lot
in there. But then it’s also something they sit back and say, “Okay. That’s
pretty cool. This is pretty interesting.” So my style
is definitely esoteric, and it has kind of an incomplete feeling at
times.
LMCC: What are some goals that you’re trying
to achieve in your work or in general?
Lek: Goals. In my life I like to just
be working as an independent artist, in the visual medium of
video, sound, film, print design, furniture design. I want to get
to the point where I’m not doing any freelance consulting. I’m
just doing my own stuff, whenever I feel like it. In terms
of where I want to be with my work, my goals? That
incompleteness I’m talking about, at some point I want to do something
which is purposeful all the way through. So I’m looking to
take my random creative-ness and put a little more discipline into it. Not
always, but I definitely want to do something which has a complete discipline
to it, you know, from beginning to end.
LMCC: Can you just tell me a little bit more about
your process in the past 3 months or the past six months, and the trajectory
of your project and how it coincides with your residency here, if so
at all?
Lek: This project has loosely been ongoing. Two
years ago I got a grant to go out to South Africa. I was trying
to study the whole idea, politics of space, restricted space, restricted
movement. Ownership, violence, renewal. Dealing with apartheid,
post- apartheid, planning and movement and so forth. I called a lot
of the language in the grant proposal from that for this. So
I sort of brought that to this, thinking about here, lower Manhattan
and also, what happened over there with 9/11 and everything, and so,
I got into this space, and it was a little bit of a slow start, cause
I had a lot of other madness going on in the beginning. So I
started playing around with the maps a little bit. I took a break
off of that and I built these walls. And I had an idea for making
this office space for this fake New York City Department of Urban Codification
Kinesthetics. I was gonna put carpet in here, a fake family photo,
a whole big thing. But being busy with so much other stuff, [I
didn’t get to do that], but I’m definitely glad I got to
make these walls. It forced me to engage this space. Because
I work digitally, I can just be sitting anywhere from the Barnes and
Noble down the street to a Starbucks. Because it’s just
a lot of work on the computer. I do print things out and sketch
over them and draw and then scan them back in. I have all the
equipment at home. But it took some time to build these walls.
And in building these walls, it forced me to think about how big I
wanted to make these prints, where I want it…
LMCC: What CD or song are you listening to way
too much?
Lek: [laughs] There’s this Chicago rap
group. And it has that sort of extremely fast paced gritty, grimy
southern rap feel to it. It’s this song by this underground
Chicago rap group called Quelo. The song is Pimpaholic and
I love it. [laughs] So I have it on repeat, 24 hours.
LMCC: Wow.
Lek: Yeah. It’s a really grimy gangsta
rap Chicago.
LMCC: I was gonna ask you, any guilty pleasures
you’d like to share. For instance, my guilty pleasures
are Destiny’s Child and Haribo Peach Candy.
Lek: Well I love Mariah Carey.
LMCC: Yeah, old school Mariah Carey!
Lek: Right. It’s like Music Box Mariah
Carey. I love, love, love Mariah Carey. I actually love
sappy sappy, love songs, pop stuff.
LMCC: What’s your favorite website?
Lek: There’s a lot of cool funky websites that
I love, but I’d have to say 3Dtotal.com, it’s my homepage. It’s
a big CG portal. And they have everything from tutorials on there,
to what new movies are coming out that have tons of CG. Like
before the Incredibles came out, they had a running commentary
on every part of process. Like Sin City. So I keep it as
my homepage and it lets me know what new 3-D modeling program techniques
are out there.
LMCC: What else do you pursue?
Lek: [long pause] Happiness. [laughs]
