Galerie Cécile Fakhoury - Paris is pleased to present Sadikou Oukpedjo's new solo exhibition, Mémoires contemporaines d’un continent (Contemporary Memories of a Continent), at 29 avenue Matignon, 75008, from Thursday 12 May to Saturday 18 June 2022.
At the crossroads of a contemporary vision and an ancestral gesture, Sadikou Oukpedjo's works seem to be inhabited by a magical power. The artist offers a series of paintings on canvas and paper, some using a novel technique of mixing pigments and encaustics. Sometimes close to a chemical experiment or a ritual concoction, the artist's sculptural works display subtle colours, more or less deep or ethereal, which, like the apparent paradox suggested by the title, are inscribed beyond earthly contingencies, at the crossroads of the past and the contemporary.
His therianthropic, half-human, half-animal figures are part of a long series of myths and beliefs, ranging from Egyptian deities to shamanic rites. In a manner reminiscent of Greek or African mythologies, Sadikou Oukpedjo's works present heroes and their epics, sometimes fantastic creatures, intermediaries between gods and men, as a pictorial system to explain our societies and the origin of our cities.
The aesthetic subtlety of the paintings of Sadikou Oukpedjo, a prophet artist, nevertheless suggests the finesse of the ideas they evoke. The acerbic criticism is never devoid of tenderness, and the accuracy of the artist's gaze is made up of as much sadness as hope. If the struggle of men with each other and within themselves is often not pretty, the gods have sometimes thwarted their fate. The word of the oracle always has several meanings, which are expressed here in the beauty of the antagonisms, open or intimate, recounted by Sadikou Oukpedjo through his works.
