1-54 has carefully selected 20 leading galleries from 10 countries (Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa and the United Kingdom) to exhibit at the third edition of the fair in Marrakech. The fair will showcase the work of more than 65 artists, both emerging and established, working in a wide variety of mediums and from a range of geographical locations comprising 20 countries.

1-54 Marrakech will be accompanied by 1-54 Forum, the fair’s extensive talks and events programme, which will include artist talks and panel discussions with international curators, artists and cultural producers, to be held at La Mamounia, ESAV and Le 18 in parallel to the fair. For the 2020 Marrakech edition, 1-54 Forum will be curated for the first time by independent art space, The Showroom, London. The project will be led by The Showroom’s curatorial team and takes its methodology from the organisation’s programme of engagement with its local north-west London community, Communal Knowledge. Entitled On focus: Communal Knowledge at Large, 1-54 Forum will explore the potential of that methodology to be translated to other contexts. Nurtured by the insightful contributions of local and international agents, 1-54 Forum will become a platform to interrogate multiple practices of socially engaged art, leading to the production of a new roadmap of organisational and institutional collective methodologies originated by this encounter between artists, activists, institutions and community organisers.

1-54 will also present a wide programme of bespoke events in partnership with Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Madeen (MACAAL), Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech, Montresso* Art Foundation, Le 18, Comptoir des Mines Galerie and Institut Français, amongst others.

> Une aventure poétique, the first retrospective exhibition by Jacques Azéma at musée Yves Saint Laurent marrakech
> HAVE YOU SEEN A HORIZON LATELY?, a group exhibition curated by Marie-Ann Yemsi at Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL)
> IN-DISCIPLINE #3 at Montresso* Art Foundation
> Comptoir des Mines Galerie presenting two solo exhibitions by Mohamed Arejdal and Fatiha Zemmouri in their art space in the heart of Gueliz
> Hamdoullah ça va! a group show with Mohamed Bourouissa and four young artists, presented by Sonia Perrin at DaDa
> Alter Ego Uprisings at Dar Moulay Ali, Maison de la France à Marrakech, a group show with works by artists Amina Benbouchta, Deborah Benzaquen, Soumiya Jalal, Seloua Ejjennane, curated by Elisa Ganivet

Galleries participating at 1-54 Marrakech 2020

• Afikaris
• AFRONOVA GALLERY
• Eclectica Contemporary
• galerie 127
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury
• Galerie Nathalie Obadia
• Goodman Gallery
• GVCC
• Katharina Maria Raab
• L’Atelier 21
• Loft Art Gallery
• LouiSimone Guirandou
• Gallery MAGNIN-A
• Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art
• Nil Gallery
• Primo Marella Gallery
• So Art Gallery
• UBUNTU art gallery
• VOICE gallery
• WHATIFTHEWORLD

1-54 Marrakech is located at La Mamounia:

La Mamounia Palace
Avenue Bab Jdid
Marrakech 40040
Morocco

20 – 21 February: by invitation only

Saturday 22 February
11:00 – 19:00

Sunday 23 February
11:00 – 18:00

1-54 Marrakech is free and open to all

The post 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair Marrakech 2020 appeared first on Artskop.

Vincent Michéa is a lover of music and vinyl, especially the visual and graphic aspect of the album covers he reproduces. “I consider myself to be a ‘variété singer’, someone who knows how to sing everything from rock to funk, from folk to popular song“ says Michéa. Michéa’s choice of everyday subjects, his flat, brightly-coloured tones and his stylised treatment of scenes bring him close to Pop Art. Michéa co-founded the label 100% Dakar and worked in the DKR studio in the 90s.

“Some wonderful Senegalese or Congolese orchestras have this desire to know how to do everything, this willingness to play all the repertoires in the best possible way and I love that! That’s what I’m looking for in my work, something that’s easy to get hold of, something popular. I’m a variety painter who adapts his subject to his technique. I use very graphic codes, very visible in my collages, my painting and my marouflages of sheets of paper. I adapt my subject to my medium,” States the artist.

Vincent Michéa, who does not wish to associate his art with any political discourse, paints for those who are watching. His works are meant to awaken the senses and to “please” as he emphasizes. “I put things back into images that people are so used to seeing that they don’t see them any more,” he says, “Like album covers. It’s like Pop Art, where you revisit popular objects and give them to look at again by highlighting their graphic qualities or colours. In my street scenes, market scenes, the colours are cut, there is a stylisation of form and colour.”

After graduating from the Ecole Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques in Paris, Vincent Michéa left in 1986 to work as a graphic designer in Dakar, at the time of Afro-pop cinema and the precursors of African rap. His training as a graphic designer inked in him the importance of form to the point that it became the heart of his research. “You learn drawing by starting with the nude to have a notion of composition, more than mastery or anatomy. I trained as a graphic designer and in typography the white of the letter is as important as the printed black, it’s the form and the counter-form. The eye circulates and it has to be comfortable to read or look at. Mastering typography helps me to compose my paintings. Painting must be pleasant to read,” insists the painter. His work conveys a nostalgic and glamorous images of Dakar, with its modernist architecture, the abundance of its past music scene, its flowers that cover everything and its local life.

In 1987 Vincent Michéa exhibited his work for the first time at the Galerie Nationale du Sénégal. Between 1988 and 1991, he returns to Paris and works with Roman Cieslewicz, a major Polish artist of the graphic scene. Encouraged by this renowned graphic designer, he reinforces his interest in printed things and printing techniques. In 2007 he runs photomontage workshops at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa and from the following year he takes charge of the silkscreen workshop at the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Marrakech. Vincent lives and works between Paris and Dakar.

VARIÉTÉ

Vincent Michéa at Magnin-A Gallery until 1st February 2020

Opening on Saturday, December 7, 2019, from 2 to 8 p.m.

Magnin-A Gallery

118, Boulevard Richard Lenoir, 75011 – Paris

The post Vincent Michéa in Variety appeared first on Artskop.

Bringing together 45 galleries from 19 countries, 1-54 will be presenting 16 galleries from Africa and over 140 artists of both emerging and established profile. 15 galleries will be welcomed to the London fair for the first time including, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, Claire Oliver Gallery, espace d’art contemporain 14N 61W, Galerie Ernst Hilger, Galleria Anna Marra, Guns & Rain, The Hole, Kalashnikovv Gallery, Luce Gallery, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Nil Gallery, Sakhile & Me, SMITH, Tabari Art Space and Ubuntu Art Gallery.

Building on the success of the expanded programme of non-profit Special Projects, 1-54 will once again present a number of collateral projects, including including Mary Sibande’s first solo exhibition in the UK, I Came Apart at the Seams presented in partnership with Somerset House running through the 7 January 2020. 1-54 is also proud to renew the partnership with the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF) to commission a large-scale installation in The Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court at Somerset House.

Curated for the first time by curator Kerryn Greenberg, Head of International Collection Exhibitions at Tate, 1-54 FORUM returns over four afternoons. Dedicated to the late Nigerian curator Bisi Silva, the programme will convene leading cultural practitioners to discuss the questions at the core of Silva’s practice.

Full list of exhibitors

• 50 Golborne (London, United Kingdom)
• Addis Fine Art (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
• AFRONOVA GALLERY (Johannesburg, SouthAfrica)
• AGorgi (Tunis,Tunisia)
• Catinca Tabacaru Gallery (New York, USA)
• Circle Art Gallery (Nairobi,Kenya)
• Clare Oliver Gallery (New York, USA)
• Ed Cross Fine Art (London, United Kingdom)
• espace d’art contemporain 14N 61W (Fort de France, Martinique)
• Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris, France)
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire / Dakar, Senegal)
• Galerie Ernst Hilger (Vienna, Austria)
• Galleria Anna Marra (Rome, Italy)
• Gallery 1957 (Accra, Ghana)
• Gallery Nosco (Marseille, France)
• Guns & Rain (Johannesburg, South Africa)
• The Hole (New York, USA)
• HUBERTY & BREYNE GALLERY (Paris, France / Brussels, Belgium)
• Jack Bell Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• James Cohan (New York, USA)
• Kalashnikovv Gallery (Johannesburg, South Africa)
• Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• L’Atelier 21 (Casablanca, Morocco)
• Lawrie Shabibi Gallery (Dubai, UAE)
• Loft Art Gallery (Casablanca, Morocco)
• Luce Gallery (Turin, Italy)
• MAGNIN-A (Paris, France)
• Mashrabia Gallery (Cairo, Egypt)
• Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami, USA)
• Nil Gallery (Paris, France)
• October Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• Primo Marella Gallery (Milan, Italy)
• Sakhile & Me (Frankfurt, Germany)
• Selma Feriani Gallery (Tunis, Tunisia)
• SMAC (Stellenbosch / Cape Town / Johannesburg, South Africa)
• SMITH (Cape Town, South Africa)
• SMO Contemporary Art (Lagos,Nigeria)
• Sulger-Buel Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• Tabari Art Space (Dubai, UAE)
• TAFETA (London,United Kingdom)
• Tiwani Contemporary (London, United Kingdom)
• Ubuntu Art Gallery (Cairo, Egypt)
• Vigo Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• WHATIFTHEWORLD (Cape Town, South Africa)
• Yossi Milo Gallery (New York, USA)

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair 

3-6 October 2019, Somerset House

London Somerset HouseStrand, London WC2R 1LA

The post Gallery list announced for the 7th edition of 1-54 london appeared first on Artskop.

An increasingly large contingent within Investec Cape Town Art Fair is made up of prominent galleries from around the globe. These galleries represent exciting, established and emerging artists with a presence in museums, biennials, and important private collections around the world. International galleries returning to the Fair are:

• Perrotin (Paris)
• Galleria Minini (Brescia)
• Galerie Cécile Fakhoury (Abidjan)
• Galleria Continua (San Gimignano)
• Circle Art Gallery (Nairobi)
• Officine dell’Immagine (Milan)
• Gregor Podnar (Berlin)
• First Floor Gallery (Harare)
• Tyburn Gallery (London)
• October Gallery (London)
• Galleria Giovanni Bonelli (Milan)
• Addis Fine Art (Addis Ababa)
• Afriart Gallery (Kampala)
• ARTCO Gallery (Aachen)
• Caroline Smulders (Paris)
• THIS IS NOT A WHITE CUBE (Luanda)
• Sulger-Buel Lovell (London)
• Galerie Pascal Janssens (Ghent)
• Art First (London), MOVART (Luanda)
• THIS IS NO FANTASY (Melbourne).

There is also an influx of international galleries participating in Investec Cape Town Art Fair for the first time:

• Templon (Paris)
• MAGNIN-A (Paris)
• LOOM Gallery (Milan)
• Ayyam Gallery (Dubai)
• Retro Africa (Lagos)
• Lia Rumma (Milan)
• LKB/Gallery (Hamburg)
• Omenka Gallery (Lagos)
• Montoro12 Gallery (Rome)
• Eduardo Secci Contemporary (Florence)
• Art Twenty One (Lagos)
• Apalazzo Gallery (Brescia)
• Barbara Paci Galleria d’Arte (Pietrasanta)
• Nil Gallery (Paris)
• Cellar Contemporary (Trento)
• ELA – Espaço Luanda Arte (Luanda)
• NOMAD Gallery (Brussels)
• Sitor Senghor (Paris)
• Louis Simone Guirandou Gallery (Abidjan)
• Matter Gallery (Toronto).

Investec Cape Town Art Fair serves as the hometown fair of local galleries with a significant international presence. ICTAF 2019 will see new presentations by leading South African galleries including Goodman Gallery, Everard Read CIRCA, Stevenson, SMAC Gallery, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Gallery MOMO, SMITH, and Blank Projects. Alongside their presentations at ICTAF these galleries, each of whom are pillars of the art scene in Cape Town and South Africa at-large, will form a captivating programme of exhibition openings and events to coincide with the Fair.

Tomorrows/Today, the section of the Fair which aims to place a spotlight on emerging and under-represented artists, will be curated by Fair Curator Tumelo Mosaka. The artists presented in Tomorrows/Today are positioned to be tomorrow’s leading names in contemporary art. The presentations in the section have continued to be thought-provoking and experimental since its inception at the 2016 edition of the Fair. Tomorrows/Today reiterates the Fair’s support of artists who may otherwise be overlooked by the art market.

The second iteration of the SOLO section, will explore the effects of the digital world on artistic production and our lived realities. Each edition of SOLO aims to present a more in-depth insight into the artistic practices of a varied selection of artists than is commonly found in the commercially-driven art fair setting. The selected artists have varying aesthetics and contexts, are situated in different stages of their careers, and have unique perspectives on each edition’s thematic focus.

Artskop3437 is an official partner of Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF)

See the full exhibitor list here

© Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) 2019

The post Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTF) 2019 appeared first on Artskop.

The painter Amadou Sanogo pays a lot of attention to the nature of the support, from simple fabric to very thick artisanal cotton canvases from the suppliers of Bogolan. The canvas, its irregularities, its defaults .. are an essential element in his work.

The canvas is laid on the floor without a frame in the middle of the studio. Standing in front of the canvas, Amadou Sanogo uses a pencil, his fingers, or directly a tube of acrylic to draw some figures and shapes that are always located in the center of the canvas. Everything is built and balanced around these figures according to his experimentations with colours. The colour of the background, specially prepared for each painting is very often monochrome. It is applied at last and eliminates all the elements that are not essential to him anymore. 

Beyond an apparent simplicity, the artworks of Amadou Sanogo have an undeniable graphic strength accentuated by the presence of objects, signs, circles, dots, lines … all these elements have a meaning and add to the narrative. 

With his education, traditional and family values, Amadou Sanogo draws his inspiration from a cultural, political and social context that continuously makes him wonder and that he views with a critical eye. He is an artist of the world deeply invested and engaged in the Malian society between tradition and modernity. 

Amadou Sanogo was born in 1977 in Segou. His ancestors were Sénoufo, noble and farmers. They founded the commune of Zangorola in the area of Sikasso in the south of Mali that belonged to the Kingdom of Kénédougou (Country of light). Its kings Tiéba and Babemba Traoré are acknowledged and respected for being the last opponents to the colonial army lead by the French in Mali. Amadou Sanogo is happy to talk about his origins: “to know where we go we need to know where we are from”. He is the heir of this land full of history, symbol of resistance and endowed of a rich artistic patrimony. 

Obstinate, Amadou Sanogo did not follow the path he was supposed to. Instead of becoming an engineer, he chose to study at the Institut National des Arts in Bamako while “a noble should not indulge in the activities of a griot”.

He learns the traditional technique of Bogolan, iconic fabric of the Malian culture, before turning to painting. Annoyed by the academic training, Amadou Sanogo decides to pursue his own plastic research and develop his own language. His singularity leads him to collaborate with Simon Njami and Pascale Marthine Tayou in 2006. Abdoulaye Konaté, artist and director of the INA supports him. 

Humanist and freethinker, he is also fed by tradition, which constitutes a source of knowledge, wisdom and inspiration to him. He takes a great interest into Bambara proverbs that are for him essential to the understanding of the Malian culture in its whole diversity. Since his youngest age, he is respected by his relatives for his ability to listen and his objectivity.

Committed and federating, he opens in 2014 the Atelier Badialan in the heart of the wahhabite area where he welcomes young artists. For the first time in Bamako, artists are able to independently finance their own studio, living and working together, creating in emulation, in freedom and sharing their knowledge to the public. 

→ MAGNIN-A Gallery

Amadou SANOGO at MAGNIN-A Gallery
26th January – 30th March 2019

118, Boulevard Richard Lenoir 75011 Paris +33 (0)1.43.38.13.00
Tuesday – Saturday 2-7pm

The post First solo exhibition of Amadou Sanogo at Magnin-A Gallery appeared first on Artskop.

This year, for the AKAA fair teams, the key words are openness, dialogue and relationship. “The evolution we are giving to the fair is to seek a dialogue beyond Africa, in the global South,” says Victoria Mann, the show’s founder. It was already in our DNA to promote artists who create a dialogue between Africa and the rest of the world, especially through artists from diasporas, but we want to deepen this, to map contemporary art in a new way, by probing Africa’s links with Asia, Latin America, etc. “All this as if to underline that an identity is not linked to a territory, but to the relationships that its actors maintain within it, among themselves and with elsewhere, with the elsewhere. A project considered by some to be a catch-all, but basically modern.

Listening to Victoria Mann, one can feel the thoughts of a Edouard Glissant on the creolization of the world. “The world is becoming creolized, that is, the cultures of the world brought into contact with each other in a lightning-fast and absolutely conscious way today are changing by exchanging themselves through irremissible clashes, merciless wars but also advances in consciousness and hope that allow us to say – without being utopian, or rather, by accepting to be so – that the humanities of today hardly abandon something to which they have long persisted, namely that the identity of a being is only valid and recognizable if it is exclusive of the identity of all other possible beings,” he wrote in his Introduction to a poetics of the diverse (1995).

Geographical, thematic openings….

This will include the work of Kyu Sang Lee, a Korean photographer living between Berlin and Cape Town, but also other artists who are not strictly from Africa or its diasporas. The stand of the Vallois gallery will welcome Cuban artists, Jorge Luis Miranda Carracedo and Daldo Marte in particular, through a curatorial project entitled “Benin / Cuba”. “We are looking for bridges and confrontations between regions,” observes Victoria Mann. Another “statement” not to be missed is the one from the ARTCO gallery.

“Unleashed” is a four-handed project between the famous South African artist Roger Ballen, photographer of the broken and the left behind, and the illustrator Hans Lemmen – exhibited at the Musée de la Chasse in Paris last year, and further developed by the two artists since. All this must make it possible to avoid the “store effect” (a heterogeneous gathering of works, without any link between them if not their destination, the living room of a collector) which increasingly concerns fair organisers, and dismay some visitors. “We don’t claim to renew the fair system,” concedes Victoria Mann, “rather we propose a look at artistic scenes, creating an editorial line that we refine over time, perceptible by our visitors. »

In AKAA fair Underground (can a fair sincerely create an “underground” space?), Dalida D. Bouzar will be given carte blanche. “It is the continuation of a project started in Dakar, a painting salon inspired by Senegalese photo workshops, such as those of Sidibé or Keïta, to see the social bond they can create in the street,” explains Victoria Mann. This new version, called Studio Paris, will cover the walls of the Underground space with portraits as the fair progresses. “The opening will also concern the programming of AKAA fair. Not only visual art, but also music. Thus we will be able to attend concerts by Mehdi Nassouli, Tao Ravao or La Wey Segura.

New momentum, new arrivals

All these projects aim to revitalize the fair, anchor it in the Parisian landscape and manage competition with the dynamic 1-54. By the way, it should be recalled that the first edition of AKAA fair could not take place in 2015, due to the attacks. The costs of the stands had been returned to the galleries. “We are still recovering from this cancellation three years ago. It was a major financial shock. But we are making progress in AKAA Fair. For visitors, we want to place ourselves in the area of discovery, of taking risks. “It is true that the Akaa fair offers reasonable prices. The most expensive works of the last two editions have been worth around €30,000 – and they have generally not been sold..

All this work seems to be paying off. This year, the Akaa fair will welcome new participants, and not the least: Anne de Villepoix, GVCC, the oldest gallery in Morocco, but also Magnin-A, the gallery of André Magnin, famous pioneer of the continent on behalf of the Pigozzi collection, in the 1990s, after his participation in the exhibition Les magiciens de la Terre. He will exhibit Amadou Sanogo and Gonçalo Mabunda.

And Didier Claes, a great classical art dealer from Black Africa, hunts more and more in the lands of contemporary art. This is reflected in his installation last year in the Ixelles district of Brussels, acquired in contemporary art, leaving the mythical Sablons district, as well as his participation in the fair, where he will present pieces by Kendell Geers. “We also welcome the only Ethiopian gallery,” says Victoria Mann. It will be the Addis Fine Art gallery opened in January 2016 and will present the work of Tariku Shiferaw. “Africa is not composed of emerging scenes, but of emerging markets,” she said. A healthy reminder.

The post AKAA, looking towards a plural Africa appeared first on Artskop.