We are pleased to celebrate the summer season with a selection of works by four artists presented for the first time in our gallery: A.C.M., Abu-Bakarr Mansaray, Rigo 23 and Stas Volyazlovsky.
The oeuvre of A.C.M. (France, 1951) is of an architectural nature, composed of materials that signal a scratched and dense aesthetic, eaten away by time. His miniaturized assemblages – built with typewriter parts, electronic circuitry and plaster – form complex, dusty and fragile universes that appear to fold up on themselves. His work is represented in several private (Museum of Everything; abcd) and public (Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut Lille-Metropole) collections.
The works selected of Abu Bakarr Mansaray's (West Africa, 1970) are overtly violent and defiant - depicting anthropomorphized (hominoid) figures mutilated and dismembered by warfare, disease and humiliation. Surrounded by broken glass, his characters are immersed in streams of blood and gunfire. Strewn with a range of vengeful text (The Day You See My Face You Will Never See the Next Sunrise), Mansaray's compositions are also populated with ghostly forms. The drawings of Mansaray are exhibited courtesy of the Pigozzi Collection (Geneva).
Rigo 23 (Portugal, on 1966) is a politically reactive artist whose work is based on the denunciation of excess, demanding action and respect for human rights. His prints and murals recall the aesthetic of graffiti,comic books, underground flyers and commercial posters. The selected works depict the unmanned drones, whose targeted strikes have become a central component of American military tactics in Afghanistan and other war zones. In 2009 Rigo 23's installation "The Deeper They Bury Me, The Louder My Voice Becomes" was presented at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York).
The works of Stas Volyazlovsky (Ukraine, 1971) offer a psychedelic and anarchical mixture of political puns, pornographic images and popular legends in which the artist is sometimes a participant. His compositions include provocative and obscene texts derived from Russian contemporary life – its excesses, myths and prejudices. The trash aesthetic of his ballpoint pen drawings and tea-stained embroideries (the "chifir," very popular among prisoners) recalls the style of prisoner tattoos and popular prints. Volyazlovsky's work, which he describes as "Chanson Art", was presented at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2009.