Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to announce Patrimoine, an exhibition by Ivorian artist Jems Koko Bi, from 13 March to 05 June 2021 in Abidjan. Jems Koko Bi, who lives between Abidjan and Essen, takes a distant yet deeply concerned look at the contemporary history of his native country, symbolically and plastically creating here a work of heritage.
Orange, white, green. Oranges, white, verres (glasses). The earth and the forest, peace in between. In this new solo exhibition, Jems Koko Bi asks himself: what is the meaning of heritage? For his third solo exhibition at the Galerie Cécile Fakhoury - Abidjan, Jems Koko Bi explores the themes of identity and heritage through a group of new works. The exhibition includes monumental sculptures whose strength lies in the precariousness of balance and the radicality of form, as well as woodcutting work that Jems Koko Bi began in 1995, which was set aside for a while and then recently resumed in dialogue with the work of the German artist HAP Grieshaber (1909-1981).
Heritage is what has been passed on to us, what we preserve and hand down to future generations. Its definition is the object of a collective choice, it is a marker of belonging to a community, to a descent. By making this notion the theme of his exhibition, Jems Koko Bi seeks to question the foundations of our collective identities. Each definition of heritage draws a different world, reveals a certain approach to things, beings and cultures. Beyond the rupture between the tangible and the intangible, between national heritage and the heritage of humanity, Jems Koko Bi praises the very essence of all heritage and all living beings: nature, the environment, the earth, priceless resources without which man would be nothing. Jems Koko Bi thus suggests that nature and human beings are inseparable, that the latter cannot be considered outside its environment, whose preservation is therefore vital.
The artist also questions the concepts of memory, both individual and collective, and the meaning of homage. The exhibition includes references to the recent history of the Ivory Coast as well as more conceptual representations of an intangible heritage, that of the spirit of the forest, of which Jems Koko Bi is one of the most faithful representatives. Sculptures of framiré, azobe or merina express the majesty of the tree, the beauty of the wood and succeed in transmitting the solemnity of the dense and tropical forests of Côte d'Ivoire. The use of fire to burn the wood in certain places is a good illustration of this subtle ridge where Jems is at in his creation: between balance of power and fusion, he submits the wood to the tongues of the flames of his torch, and removes it from it at the very moment when creation risks turning into destruction.
Echoing these sculptures, between strength and poetry, Jems' engravings testify to the almost strange power of the appearance of forms, of the revelation of colours. Traditional wood engraving is a work of patience and silence, of repetition of gestures, of meticulousness and rigour. The wood is not worked without effort and the support, paper or canvas, refuses at first to adhere to the pattern, to let itself be marked by its hollows and its coloured bumps. Wood chisels, rollers, paint, hammers, the back of the spoon, so many tools at the service of the work, a sublime meeting of several dimensions, the relief of the wood coming to inhabit the flat of the paper, and the colours carrying in them the rough and living material of the tree.
The works of Jems Koko Bi embody wisdom in the service of the living and of matter. The artist thus pays tribute to trees and their woods, to their infinite, polymorphous resources, to the stories they whisper and the possibilities they harbour. If trees carry the history of the world within them, then Jems is their oracle, revealing their messages to us at the end of a powerful struggle with them, both physical and spiritual.
