Artist Edward Lipski plays with the act of seeing, bringing together a range of worlds that are partly recognisable and partly blended into something new. He makes models that generate wholly unpolished perceptions of art, creating the greatest possible scope for association and symbolism – and even for playful association with critical themes.

Lipski’s work has been shown several times at the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, whose former director Jan Hoet acquired a number of powerful pieces. The Centraal Museum is the first Dutch museum to purchase work by this British artist. White Fang fits into the Centraal Museum’s collections due to its consistency with the specific identity reflected in their composition. It is a man-high work that consists of two clearly independent parts: a ‘Fang’ statue covered entirely with white blobs of acrylic, and a transparent Perspex plinth that is filled with aluminium shavings and has been graffiti-sprayed in black.

The Fang, also known as Pangwe, come from Cameroon and Gabon, and are known for their ancestral statues. The oldest known Fang statues, many of which were painted white, were used in various rituals, such as initiations or the prosecution of wrongdoers. By giving it a skin made of paint, Lipski lifts the statue, veneered and decorated like a kind of coral, out of its original tradtion, and provides it with a place in contemporary Western art.

The Perspex plinth is a reference to the plinths on which sculpture is traditionally borne. The material lends it a slightly industrial air that is reinforced by Lipski’s addition of the aluminium shavings – another high-grade industrial material. The use of graffiti at the same time wipes out its expression, which is both classical and traditional.