Paris+ par Art Basel weekend is upon us and galleries and institutions have put on a visual feast across the French capital, with myriad rich offerings, especially by African Artists. With hundreds of galleries across the capital, here is a brief glimpse of four of the most exciting shows happening right now in the city!
Peter Uka | 'The Triumph of Being'
Mariane Ibrahim presents a solo exhibition in Paris of new works by Peter Uka entitled The Triumph of Being.
While Peter Uka’s earlier work was more staunchly rooted in the memories of Benue, Nigeria in the 1970s, as recent losses are layered over increasingly-distant recollections, the new paintings reflect the tension of an interrupted conversation. These scenes are not faithful recreations of people and spaces and fashions in a photorealistic style. They are amalgamations that include, yes, archival photos… but also anachronistic radios, floor patterns sourced from Pinterest, contemporary reprints of hollandais wrapper (Dutch wax) textiles, and entirely imagined characters. Where some faces are taken from his intimate circle, most of them are entirely fabricated. Like proto-AI-generated images sourced from millions of archetypes, or Chinese landscape paintings that synthesize ideal elements to create a totally fictitious scene, Uka’s characters fall between the familiar and the uncanny.
Exhibition Dates: October 13th to December 2nd, 2023
Kehinde Wiley | 'A maze of power'
Kehinde Wiley presents a news series of portraits depicting African heads of state. Begun confidentially in 2012, the project explores the staging of power. Wiley began considering the concept of presidential leadership at Barak Obama's election in 2008. He conceptualised his presidential project in 2012, and spent the next decade travelling Africa meeting and painting the heads of state. Exploring the history of aristocratic, royal and military portraiture in 17th - 18th and 19th-century Europe, Wiley created a composition that illustrates each leader's singular view of what it means to be a contemporary African leader.
Exhibition Dates: September 26th, 2023 - January 14th, 2024
Ludovic Nkoth | 'What if'
Fondation Le Corbusier presents What if by New York-based artist Ludovic Nkoth in collaboration with Massimodecarlo gallery. Playing with our expectations, Ludovic Nkoth is particularly interested in the question of context, the reciprocal influence between the work of art and the iconic place that houses it.
Maison La Roche offers an “architectural promenade” that invites visitors to move freely from one volume to the next: in each room, from the entrance hall to the purist bedroom, Nkoth’s paintings insert themselves into the space of imagination and possibility, encouraging visitors to explore the encounter between artistic visions and architectural notions, to consider the “what ifs” that emanate from this project.
Exhibition Dates: October 17th to November 25th, 2023
Soly Cissé | 'Ecosystèmes'
Marion Chauvy gallery presents Soly Cissé’s Ecosystèmes, a major new solo exhibition centered around a selection of large-scale canvases paintings based on thème that has long been present in Cisse’s work, that of Nature, going hand in hand with environment and animal condition.
In his desire to apprehend the world on a universal scale, the artist native from Senegal Soly Cissé adopts very large formats to render the rhizomatic proliferation of the plant world and its ability to develop new strategies to exist.
Exhibition Dates: October 12th - November 9th
