In Wingspan— From Heaven to Hell, Eni reflects on agelessness, soul, paradise

By : Gregory Austin Nwakunor

Date: 17 December 2025 5:06am WAT

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The Nigerian poet, painter, sculptor and multi-media artist, Emmanuel Eni, aka Blackman in European Kitchen, is set to unveil his new work, Wingspan — From Heaven to Hell — An exhibition of paintings and sculptures. The show, which opens in Bavaria, Germany, December 19, 2025 at 4:00pm, is inspired by the complex global situation these past six years.

Eni said, “with its profound and moving points of contact with humanity, encompassing culture, politics, health, and the fragile positions of all aspects of world civilisations,” he is moved to create a revelation of intense beauty and a future projection of art that “can lead our society and the entire world to beauty, purity, progress, harmony, peace, coexistence, and existence.”

As an artist, his work rejuvenates the soul of humans. It also shows the beauty in them. His work sharpens the intuition of humans and society to know what uplifts their consciousness.

Over the years, ‘From Heaven to Hell’ has become a recurring theme in the arts. As a dramatic shift in fortune, it is a metaphor for movement from prosperity and happiness to disaster and suffering. This is seen in the travelogue From Heaven to Hell: And The Way Back. It has also been used as a song by The Gloom in the Corner in the album, Trinity. The 1933 American drama starring Carole Lombard has From Heaven to Hell, and the book by Jim Grundy detailing personal adventures and struggles. The theme has resonated as a transition from God’s presence (heaven) to eternal punishment (hell), or a spiritual journey of salvation.

“The body of work came from the idea of wanting heaven on earth, as threat and crisis continue to be a distraction from accepting the trend and facts of our present living. While scrambling for bare existential accolades, humanity is blinded by a syndrome of a simulation of material-glitters, packaged in the world system, a system and order of hideous political machinations, internal and external, as well as astral,” he said.

When he was choosing the theme of the show, two obvious topics came to him, Unseen Rivers of Africa and From Heaven To Hell, but the latter became the one wholly adopted.

The Germany-based creator and patent holder of New ‘Light Paintings’ Art, is the founder of Contemporary Baroque Art. He is also the developer of metric scale for art products as referred in his Death of the curator (2009) — a play, which reveals the intrigue and conspiracy in the art world while pointing out the dangers of curated art. He is a member of that community of Germany based creatives who are called ‘NiGer’ artists.

In the last six years, he has had successful shows in Fichtelgebirgshalle in 2019 and the region of Wunsiedel, Upper Frankonia, Bavaria, Germany. These shows testify to the fact that an artist has to be a neutral and transparent companion at a ratio of one artist to even millions of people.

First part of the show, From Heaven to Hell, held on July 23, 2025, and in that exhibition, Eni reiterated his commitment to creating works of beauty and a ‘Tir na nÖg’, a mystical, magical island in Celtic mythology, a supernatural paradise where people never age, experience no sickness, sorrow, or death, and live in eternal joy, beauty, and abundance.

He said Tir na nÖg’ best represent the realm of agelessness that relieves the strenuous huddles of human passage in a world of tedious occupations, which is stuck in “the search of livelihood through practice of diverse trades in the quest for self-sustenance and subsistence for family and society.”

According to Eni, “an artist’s work is the calling and creation of spirits to rejuvenate the soul of humans. It is also to show the beauty in them. An artist work is to sharpen the intuition of humans and society to know what uplifts their consciousness. He or she is to be a neutral and transparent companion at a ratio of one artist to even millions of people. Through the interpretation of the artist’s own life, an allegory should be transposed in three known stages — physical, metaphysical and philosophical — and thrown like an exemplary mirror projection to his or her society.”

His protean calling has created several seminal results such as, ‘Contemporary Barock Art’ under which all aspects of his creativity unite: “Visual arts, installations, performance art, poetry and music. Also, the creation and patent of the well known ‘New light Paintings Art’, which, apart from not being lithography, or stained glass, is a style and material of rediscovered picturisation, whereby, the inner light of the painting itself surpasses the light of the paintings outside.”

In it, memory of the colour pigment and the canvas is obliterated, which makes the painting to have longevity like living forever, “doing so without breaking down its matter, over time, regardless of climate and light. This ‘New Light Paintings Art” reveals the ultimate brightness inside and outside of the picture. I also have described and illustrated the (BMSFAP) Basic Metric Scale For Art Products- in my published stage drama that deals with the dangers of curated art and the inner machinery of the art world. Titled, ‘Death of the curator’, BMSFAP is a scale that determines the price of a given art product, without cognisance to material, time of making and the artist name. BMSFAP helps art buyers to know the price to pay for a given art.”

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