Often working on large formats, often on square canvases that are not unlike models of contemporary images, the artist mixes symbols, forms and materials to compose the strange scenes of a contemporary theatre in which hybrid animals and mysterious figures are the protagonists.

In a converted space, aiming at disturbing the visitor’s spatial landmarks, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye proposes a new series of paintings, works on paper and an immersive installation, as an extension of his reflections on the political and social landscape of our contemporary societies. In the manner of a visual fable, the artist depicts the story of a confrontation between characters wearing animal masks, whose thirst for power, selfishness and obscure motivations are reminiscent of a certain category of world rulers.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye installs this contemporary jungle in the heart of the Galerie Cécile Fakhoury space, inhabits it with threatening anthropomorphic allegories and takes the visitor deep into this hostile universe. Thus forcing us to look at the aberrations of our societies from the front and without any blush.

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye urges us to reflect on our role in the construction of the world, on our share of individual responsibility, while making the creative gesture a privileged act of resilience in the face of the abyss. The artist takes an uncompromisingly poetic and ironic look at contemporary society and the evils that shake it.

Born in 1988 in Dakar, Senegal, Serigne Ibrahima Dieye lives and works in Grand Mbao, Senegal. Trained at the Ecole Nationale des Arts de Dakar from which he graduated in 2013, he develops a practice at the crossroads of drawing, painting and collage. The characters in Serigne Ibrahima Dieye’s paintings and installations are ideas to which the artist has given body and matter. They are visual allegories of the evils that are tearing 21st century societies apart, but not only: once on canvas, on paper, or embodied in wood, these ideas take on their autonomy and become the protagonists of a dramatic narrative whose interpretation is the responsibility of the spectators.

Paraboles d’un règne sauvage

Serigne Ibrahima Dieye

First solo exhibition

Galerie Cécile Fakhoury

From March 14 to May 30, 2020

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