(Note: Please click on any image to enlarge it for better viewing.)

Museums can benefit from these compelling exhibitions of growing collections of Rhythmistic Visual Art that are produced around a central theme.  ONLI STUDIOS has developed concise exhibitions that streamline the process of offering great art to the enthusiastic art loving public.  Onli's practice is a tastefully rigorous Future-Primitif treatment of the great narrative-art traditions of the Western canon.

These proven visual art productions are both provocative and appealing.  Onli's Rhythmistic Visual Art is often looked at in the tradition of expanding narrative-art.  It is often a melding of visual adventure, critical techniques and materials. This is the result of a five-decade long practice. 

 Great for art enthusiasts, students and scholars.

The rare production of a dynamic creative artist exploring an over-arching theme.

These works are often human-figure-based yet infused with a variety of visual elements that speak to musical abstractions or performance compositions with a flow of imagination and originality that fills voids not regularly addressed in the current trends of the visual art world.  

These collections embrace the standards often found in major-market illustration and innovative representational painting, yet the intelligent re-contextualized subject matter is often thought provoking, multicultural, diverse or innovative while not being esoteric, trendy or narrowly relevant in the current yet passing narratives of protest or representation. 

ONLI STUDIOS is malleable to your logistics, vision, and resources in providing the best possible visual art experience. Wiki his name, Turtel Onli, for more information.

This is the work of an emerging genre.

Onli's work being viewed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 2020.

Excerpt of "No Evils" at the Box Factory For The Arts in St. Josesph, Michigan. 2019.

A review on Rhythmism as an evolving visual arts genre with positive growth potential 

written by Nate McLinn, a rare intelligent and well connected to the artists community independent art critic, for the Chicago Artists Coalition newspaper, 2008.

"Butterfly Melon" Oils on 18" X 24" archival canvas board. From the "Passion Fruit" collection.

A University of Chicago student visitor at ONLI STUDIOS.

Group showcase and convention at the WPA era South Side Community Art Center. 2015.

Solo exhibition at the ETA Foundation For The Arts, Chicago. 2009.

Solo exhibition and workshop series at the Corvus Gallery of the University of Chicago. 2021.

At the Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago. Juried Competition Exhibition 2021.

" NOG Banking!". Photo by Aki,

Curators visiting the "Rhythmistic Residency" at the Hyde Park Art Center. 2020.

Installing the "Mpogwe Quilt" of the "Rhythmistic Quilts" collection per the "Rhythmistic Smorgasbord" solo exhibition at the Box Factory For The Arts, St. Joseph, Michigan. 2019.

At the " The Rhythmistic Jimi" solo exhibition at the legendary Younger Gallery, Chicago, in 1981.

Above: QR link to ONLI STUDIOS web site.

Rhythmistic Visual Artist, Onli and Archivist / Librarian ,James Danky, 

at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. 2021.

Exhibitions, Residencies & Visiting Artist programming. 

"Rhythmism Lives!" 

In 1983, for the 25th Anniversary convention of the National Conference of Artis, I was selected to create an illustration for the convention's program book.  I took this as both a great honor but also a fantastic opportunity to display Rhythmism.  They gave me a one-day deadline, which was something in my illustration practices was very common. Future-Primitif it was.  Looking both ways.  Forward and backward. learning and retaining. Planting and harvesting.  From one's collective primary consciousness to one's bondless untold imagination.    Needless to say, there was incredible push-back from most of the participants of the "Black Art Movement" and the Cultural Nationalist types. They were intensely orthodox.  They robustly insisted it was simply "Black Art"!  That Rhythmism could not be since art should or could not be categorized. 

Then as now, their thesis of "Black Art" was a nexus of poor to limited technique and skill.  With the subject manner derived from traumatic episodes of Black and African suffering from slavery or colonialization. Plus, images of selected Black or African historical figures or personalities.  They valued a lack of skill as being more authentic.  

"Iman" circa 1978 Copyright 1987 Turtel Onli. Ink on vellum.

Thus, really more "Black"!  That having competitive skills and technique fit for an Oba or a Pharoah was actually being caught up in a "White Art Thing".  And taking on the challenges of commercial competition,,,,,well that was totally demised as "selling out"!

"Femme Chat" Circa 1977. Created for MODE Avantgarde Magazine. 

Copyright 1995 Turtel Onli

That was so not Onli. He was looking at every option to display aspects of Rhythmism as a Future-Primitif genre to expand the constricting canon of the international visual art world, Fine and Commercial. This was a simple iconic moment.  The NCA or National Conference of Artist was the oldest organization for the celebration and promotion of Black and African Visual Artists.  

"Rhythmistic Fatherhood" circa 1974.  Acrylics on canvas. 18" X 40".

Copyright 2022 Turtel Onli.

 Destroyed in a studio fire in 2001.

But beyond the novelty of being a Black person making art about the narratives of the Black experience, it was pretty stale to me.  Onli was bringing the heat.  The fiya, flow and funk plus a cascading skill set that included illustrating for some of the largest publishing & broadcasting companies of that era. 

Published in the Paris Metro American English Magazine in 1978 as the "Punk" scene was exploding.

NOTE: The credits in this illustration included a statement about Onli and his first international 

Rhythmistic Art solo exhibition at the FIAP.

 Onli was seriously taking the artistic fight to the belly of the beasts,,,,known as systemic racism, heterophobia, classism, and agism.  Onli still does!

  5 Great Reasons to read Rhythmistic Graphic Novels:

a. A Graphic Novel is a book made up of story-telling content that is both visual, and illustrated with a merging of written text and narrative art.

b.  Rhythmism is a genre in the expressive arts that first proved itself in the Visual Arts as being Future-Primitif with an emphasis on imagination and originality. 

Rhythmism was developed by Prof. Turtel Onli, M.A.A.T., a former clinical Art Therapist.

1. With short, concise dialogue interspersed with longer text and beautiful images and narrative illustrations one absorbs a story and the overall content faster and more completely when reading the Rhythmistic Graphic Novel.

2.  These limited-edition Graphic Novels are a truly collectable diverse form of literature. They combine images and words to blend Visual and Literary Intelligences into a rigorous yet appealing process enhancing higher ordered cognitive skills as a research proven by-product. They offer a chance at insightful escapism and dynamic fantasy or can be about imagination driven contemporary mythology to historical precision.  

Great for fans, collectors, curriculum coordinators, educators, librarians and students.

Life can be boring or stressful at times, and therefore escapism is important once in a while.

3. The great thing about the Graphic Novel is the emotional responses and connections between the reader and the Graphic Novel itself as the Graphic Novel dynamically illustrates every emotion, struggle, process and physical changes in the characters, and its content. This provokes deeper thinking, builds rewarding comprehension and critical thinking skills while providing low-budget quality entertainment.

4. The best experimental Visual Artists, hot Writers, original Authors, cool Graphic Designers, and surgical Editors work regularly to produce Rhythmistic Graphic Novels.  These hybrids of the Visual / Literary arts are usually a complete story unto itself.  They are both a compelling Art Form and a proven Literary Form. Their unique content may be totally fantasy based, Sci-Fi driven, about contemporary mythology, wellness in personal care, sustainably going green, showing positive conflict resolution or providing delightfully needed humor.

5. Rhythmistic Graphic Novels merge the best of all of this reasons and concepts in an adventurous way that goes where the mainstream does not.  They manifest true, open, expressive and expansive diversity that often is rendered in its award-winning Future-Primitif style. Thus, being the best alternative to the traditional corporate, often boring and predictable Graphic Novels from the major brands.

In conclusion, the growing line of limited edition Rhythmistic Graphic Novels from ONLI STUDIOS LLC with its experimental factors of "Fun, Fire, & Funk" are prefect for this screen-aged world and its over whelming flow of corporate induced creativity that is more about profitable capital gains then the traits, themes and concepts listed above.

 

 Curators and collectors will note:

 CHICAGO- One of the Future-Primitif notions of Rhythmism is the channeling of concepts, images and visual ideas from one time period to another generation. Prof. Onli insists that this is a byway of imagination. Giving renewal to traditions, Art,, and ,visual statements that often flow from beyond ones actual experiences or studies. 

 Onli presented this concept with a lecture and exhibition in 2019 in St, Joseph Michigan's amazing creative venue, The Box Factory For The Arts, to positive critical acclaim. This visionary practice is not about 'resistance" or "protest'" but about giving new artistic life as a growing genre that is at one, African, yet Universal with immense growth potential. 

 Since the 1970s Onli's practice has advocated the reality of actual un-named genres in the Visual Arts born of the Black American experience. Much in the way that collective expressive cultural experience has jettisoned Musical genres. 

Onli has manifested this visual notion into several completed collections of Visual Art.