The new gallery opens with a two-person exhibition by Emmanuel Awuni and Fungai Benhura, exploring art as energy, movement and layered emotion.
Emmanuel Awuni, Days Spent In The Sun, 2023. Polyurethane, rosewood, glazed clay, oil paint, thread, mixed media fabric, pins, 120 x 166 x 12 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Loop, London. Photo: Noah Da Costa
A bold new chapter in contemporary art begins with the launch of Project Loop, an independent gallery platform committed to showcasing experimental voices and fostering transnational artistic dialogue. Opening its doors for the first time on 26 April 2025, the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, ‘F=ma’, introduces new and recent works by rising talents Emmanuel Awuni and Fungai Benhura. Together, they offer a compelling investigation into rhythm, materiality, and the metaphysical force of art.
Taking its name from Newton’s second law of motion—Force = mass × acceleration—‘F=ma’ becomes more than a scientific formula. In the hands of Awuni and Benhura, it transforms into a poetic framework for thinking about art-making as both a physical act and an emotive, spiritual charge. Their practices, while distinct, find resonance in movement, resistance, and the layered interplay between intuition and structure.
The idea of rhythm emerges as a central theme throughout the exhibition. In a candid conversation excerpted in the exhibition materials, Benhura reflects on how some of his works seem to manifest spontaneously, driven by a rhythm that “just hits you in the moment.” Awuni responds by anchoring this sensation within the philosophical roots of African art and the Negritude movement, citing Léopold Senghor’s concept of rhythm as “the architecture of being.” For these artists, rhythm is not simply formal—it is ontological, a generative force that guides their gestures and connects them to larger histories.
Installation view, Emmanuel Awuni & Fungai Benhura, ‘F=ma’, exhibition at Loop, London, 2025. Photo: Noah Da Costa
Benhura’s works are grounded in immediacy and improvisation. Large-scale paintings like Two Kind (2025) and Full Moon (2025) radiate energy through acrylic, paper, and gestural mark-making layers. He recalls moments during his residency where he would move uncontrollably while creating, swept up in the music playing through his headphones—Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. This physical engagement with sound and sensation becomes embedded in the canvas, resulting in works that breathe dynamically and pulse.
Materials are never neutral in Benhura’s practice. He discusses the technical challenges of working with silk paper and the accidental discovery of water-mixable oil paints that unlocked new possibilities in texture and colour. His approach involves trial and transformation—building, covering, destroying, and rebuilding. “When I destroy and rebuild, cover and uncover, the painting breathes,” he explains. This layering process evokes both personal excavation and a universal rhythm of creation and erasure.
Awuni’s contributions extend the exhibition’s conceptual and emotional reach. His paintings—such as Rintrah’s Raw (2024) and Asé (2025)—are rich with texture and symbolic weight. His use of oil on linen recalls classical techniques while introducing new, spiritually charged meanings. In works like Florecent Orange and Limbo, the surfaces oscillate between abstraction and suggestion, evoking landscapes of feeling, memory, and cultural resonance.
Sculptural works by Awuni, including Sankofa (2022) and Days Spent in the Sun (2023), further expand his visual language. Constructed from materials like buff clay, memory foam, cowry shells, rosewood, and mixed media fabrics, these pieces are tactile reflections on diasporic identity and ancestral knowledge. The symbolism of Sankofa, an Adinkra concept meaning “to return and get it,” suggests a retrieval of lost wisdom—a theme underscored by the use of gold leaf and traditional materials.
Installation view, Emmanuel Awuni & Fungai Benhura, ‘F=ma’, exhibition at Loop, London, 2025. Photo: Noah Da Costa
Awuni speaks to the spiritual dimensions of his practice, recalling the transformative experience of encountering works by Philip Guston and El Greco in person. These encounters revealed the visceral, transcendent energy that painting can hold—a force not unlike the one that animates his and Benhura’s creations. “It felt like Jesus was coming out of the painting,” Awuni says of El Greco. “But I see that in your work too,” he tells Benhura, “the shaking—the force on your nerves. That’s what gives the work its rhythm.”
The artists bring a sense of urgency and openness to Project Loop’s debut. Their dialogue—spanning ideas of physics, spirituality, movement, and personal discovery—becomes the beating heart of ‘F=ma’. The exhibition does not prescribe fixed narratives. Instead, it invites viewers into a space of resonance, where intuition leads and form follows.
Project Loop’s choice to open with such a dynamic pairing signals its ambition and ethos. Rooted in experimentation and collaboration, the gallery sets out to become a site of exchange—where emerging artists can share practices that defy easy categorisation and cultivate new modes of thinking and feeling.
‘F=ma’ runs until 24 May 2025. In launching both the exhibition and the gallery, Project Loop establishes a platform that honours risk-taking, rhythm, and revelation—a forceful beginning with mass and acceleration in equal measure.
For more information, please visit Project Loop.
