Godwin Champs Namuyimba Masaka, Uganda, 1989

Godwin Champs Namuyimba has an astute sense of presence when extracting the fantastical from the mundane. His observation skills tell of the humanity that his subjects offer through insights and exposure into their most vulnerable, humiliating or farcical moments. His subjects suggest that they have gone through some sort of change but it is either so discreet that we overlook the subtleties of that transformation, or we are apprehensive to really learn what that change may mean to us.

It is inside the feeling of unease that is delivered through the agency of beauty where Namuyimba finds the unintentional poetry that forms the basis for his works. The eye of the artist wandering around in these paintings. Some of his perspectives are dizzyingly misplaced to the untrained eye, but these ad hoc perspectives tell us more about the act of seeing, as if we were there ourselves on the inside of his paintings looking around, up and down, from side to side.

Namuyimba shares this act of observation with the masters of yesteryear such as Paul Cézanne and Juan Gris and his paintings come together in compositions that remind us that the act of observation is never stationary. It is forever changing and fleeting.