1:54 2016 Contemporary African Art Fair / Top Ten List – London – October 2016
Soly Cissé’s fascinating large scale work. The Sulger-Buel Lovell gallery is showing new work by Cissé, painted after a difficult personal stint that enriched his trade, resulted in even stronger work. The series presented by the gallery (the whole set is to be seen, nicely kept in the basement storage of the fair) forms a beautiful museum show. The paintings are pictorial and graphic, with humans and animals emerging from a rich chaos of colors, creating a magical world.
Justin Dingwall’s moving portraits of a boy and a girl with albinism. ARTCO gallery presents a rich series of his work, intimate portraits, stunningly sculptural representations with butterflies, questioning the suffering of albinoes, their exclusion from society.
JP Mika’s happy pop paintings, directly inspired from his mentors Chéri Chérin and Chéri Samba, in direct lineage with the Kinshasa painting tradition.
Mohau Modisakeng’s intense and meditative self-portraiture. Modisakeng is the 2016 winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist award for visual art. His portraits, large scale square black backgrounds with his own dark features emerging from the light, evoke the scars of the violence suffered during the apartheid.
The best gallery space for Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, a gorgeous alcove set as a colonial space, where preminence is given to key female artists, from Ayana Jackson to Maimouna Guerresi and Zohra Opoku.
Franck Lundangi’s naive and mysterious paintings at Anne de Villepoix gallery.
Slimen Elkamel’s large scale painting at Aïcha Gorgi, as a complex fresco full of details and complexity.
Victor Ehikhamenor’s folded canvases. GAFRA shows a series of 6 large-scale paintings, enamel on canvas, with no frame, hanging simply on the walls, with folded corners.
Armand Boua (Côte d’Ivoire) – A series of strong and elusive paintings, textured on recycled cardboard boxes of the children of his home town, showing the suffering of locals, the difficulty of leaving in makeshift shelters.
