Remi Ajani’s method of working, meticulously accumulating marks on the surface only to annihilate them with palette knife, sponge, and brush, is comparable to an actor who rehearses her lines and actions on the empty stage for weeks, and then before an audience improvises as she performs. These are pictures of life lived; pictures of what has been lost. This new body of work, evocatively entitled “Still Life”, offers a doubled reference to both the earliest traditions of the Dutch “stilleven” or “vanitas”, humble meditations on the transience of life, but also the attempt of each of these pictures to “still” time, understood as a verb rather than an adjective. Whether wildflowers lost in the excesses of summertime abandon, or athletic bodies pushed to the very extremity of contorted grace, we find ourselves glimpsing a moment of these breathing, sweating things, summoned from some empty space. (excerpt from an essay by Matthew Holman)