Galerie Cécile Fakhoury is pleased to present Aboudia's new solo exhibition, Tokyo, from 19 June to 28 August 2021. The exhibition will feature new works on canvas and paper, a monumental fresco and a selection of drawings from the artist's archives.
Some may recognise in Tokyo, the title of the exhibition, a reference to Yopougon, Aboudia's home district. Unless this Nouchi translation is no longer (or not yet?) relevant, carried away by the ceaseless flow of life that characterises this language and those who speak and invent it every day. That does not matter. The title alone evokes the freedom of Aboudia's plastic gesture, which draws a world of fluid geography, unreservedly inspired by a constellation of references, where the present is king.
Covering the entire back wall of the gallery, a huge fresco thirteen metres long welcomes the visitor and transports him into another world, that of the district, of the gbaki. In Abidjan, many people speak Nouchi, an Ivorian slang, and almost everyone understands it. However, the language is constantly evolving, new words are created every day. There is no dictionary, no "academy" responsible for validating neologisms, no official network for disseminating new vocabulary. Nouchi never stands still. It never stops being updated. It is within the informality of its existence that this language finds its freedom and manages to remain deeply alive.
Just like Nouchi, Aboudia's plastic universe is made of perpetual movement, creativity and energy. Aboudia thus invents an aesthetic vocabulary of his own, the strength of which resonates with the varied experiences of different viewers. By not conforming to any code, Aboudia's work rises above borders to reach a universal form. His paintings take us on a journey into his world, which is strangely familiar to us. In this world, fantasized otherworlds are inscribed in the reality of the present, and the fourth wall of reality is constantly being destroyed to let in parallel dreams. The impossible has no place here. As the background of the fresco testifies, made up of an assembly of images, articles, photographs or book pages, the artist appropriates what he does not know, makes what is other his own, without waiting for anyone's permission. His works contain in themselves the extent of his world, its infinity, beyond all limits.
