Everything about the Ghanian, Berlin-based artist Selassie feels like finding peace and light in chaos, like a beautiful experiment that explores human life in its deepest layers. His art: a soul conversation, his music: a healing tool. Today, the multi-faced, self-taught artist opens his gallery show ‘The Regular Man’ that is magically witnessing his search for self-love and acceptance in order to find his own path in life. As a young dad and constantly being faced with a feeling of not bonding with our society, he uses his most vulnerable self, his very intimate struggles to create a conversation everyone can somehow relate to without know much.

„Reflecting on these paintings: It feels like a moment of new circle. It feels like I allow myself to have fun with it and reflect. It used to be just doing it to manage to just actually live (not talking money) talking and breathing! Now I accept it and allow it to guide me in different reflections“, explains Selassie, who barely shows his art elsewhere, hardly ever on Social Media. The paintings are a piece of his emotional world, something that is extending his inner world without anyone or anything referring. Very different from his music, says Selassie, which is more of a collaborative process, especially when looking for the right people to produce it. And this pureness can be felt –  every single painting is a piece of Selassie’s world, no matter if he captures a friends’ reflection on bigger visions or invents a colorful James Baldwin moment.

“As an artist you are a regular man or a regular woman, you don’t want to be, but you are caught up in it. Being a young dad and artist, I am still figuring out my path and my feeling of not bonding with our society. When I think about the regular man in our world, who fits in, I can see that this person wants to be accepted and loved. A regular man wants to catch his own roses.”

In the end, it all leads back to being a kid, doing and creating things without thinking too much about it. Poet Hafiz once wrote: „The difference between a good artist and a great one is: the novice will often lay down his tool or brush, then pick up an invisible club on the mind’s table and helplessly smash the easels and jade. Whereas the vintage man no longer hurts himself or anyone and keeps on sculpting light.“ This is when authenticity speaks and real art comes into existence.