Unusual materials and forms for a new aesthetic (2024)

Once, it was said that Contemporary Art had to break away from the confines of a precise and defined aesthetic. It had to dare, provoke, astonish, and disorient the viewer. Today, this belief still holds, but subtly, there's a sense that something has changed.
The "challenge" each artist faces seems at times to be well-defined by a geometric scheme of ideas and visions. There appears to be a preconceived notion, an unwritten rule, something rigid that imposes limits or boundaries on an artist's vision. This obstacle is generally only overcome in the creation of sculptures.

Certainly, throughout the history of art, numerous artists have ventured beyond the horizontal, square, or circular canvas. However, these instances have often been personal explosions, unique concepts, occasionally reaching high levels, but not necessarily giving rise to a defined movement.

Then, at a certain point, Africa Continent comes into play, devoid of readily available materials and pre-established tracks for artistic creation. For some, this lack might be seen as a curse, but for others, it's a blessing. An artist's capacity becomes evident in observing the universality of thought that permeates them—how their vision expands, regardless of their situation, life, or place of belonging. This, in turn, shaped the avant- garde of the past into what they are today in terms of critical and artistic recognition.

There's a powerful force, a potent will to express oneself through every available means. This might evoke the concept of “Arte Povera” at first glance, and indeed, it does, but the discourse is much broader in this case.

The use of unusual materials is a hallmark of these artists. It's not merely a "Plan B" but a choice that, though preceded by economic challenges, starts with the principle of creating something new, unseen, unique in the contemporary artistic panorama. In the lives of these artists, there has never been a preconception, a foundation indicating precise rules, as they operate in a realm devoid of such constraints. I refer to the realms of creativity and art.

"Once you free your mind about the concept of harmony and of art being 'correct,' you can do whatever you want."

- Giorgio Moroder

And so it has been for these artists. What we celebrate with this exhibition is not only the innovative use of materials but the great ability for spatial composition and the clear vision accompanying the utilization and juxtaposition of different mediums. The judicious use of these materials is the result of this creation, wherein artists generate compositions with indefinite, variable, yet undoubtedly intriguing and intricate geometries.

The interweaving of various materials tells a unique story within the artworks, where each characteristic is highlighted yet simultaneously amalgamated in the artist's imaginative composition. A bottle cap is no longer waste; the same goes for fabric or a plastic bag. All become fundamental chords in the artist's imaginary firmament, where each object is meticulously positioned and imbued with personal significance for their work.

This indicates, more than ever, two aspects: first, a freedom of thought devoid of rules, and second—beyond great mastery—an incredible capacity for evolution and innovation that lays the groundwork for the birth of an informal movement. The gallery proposes this based on its in-depth study of these artists because these practices are changing the perception of the usual form, offering a new interpretation and direction to the dogmatic canons of current aesthetics.

The participation of abdoulaye konaté

Konaté is known for his large-scale compositions that use a highly accentuated figurative and symbolic language. His textile installations explore socio-political and environmental issues, both specific to Mali and wider Africa; scenes of social unrest, military conflict, sovereignty, faith, globalization, ecological change, and epidemic all become objects of semiotic investigation and deconstruction. Employing materials typical of Mali, namely fabrics dyed, embroidered and hand-sewn together, Konaté is inspired by the West African tradition of using fabrics as a mode of communication and commemoration.

Its reference to a localized cultural technique is then astutely realigned to meet a broader geopolitical framework, where the material acts as an intercessor between local and global structures. One day, while he was drawing with pencil and trying to create volume through shades of grey, a teacher looked at his work and said: “you can get more depth if you understand colour”. The young artist Abdoulaye Konaté thus understood that by broadening his palette he could broaden his expression. He began incorporating textiles into installations tearing the colour fabric into small fragments. This idea came to him while observing the traditional clothing of Senoufo musicians. Abdoulaye Konaté’s work speaks to us via the senses rather than reason. And the colours, that feature as a leitmotiv, in a rhythmical line that is the motif, are like a musical variation around which the artist’s symphony revolves. Colours that underscores, intensifies, brightens. A turbulent silence, an eclectic joy, the meaning of which vanishes with the end of the spectator's sight. In Konaté's impressive Fiber Art installations, colour is a harbinger of feelings, pacifist messages and high ideals, a symbolic vector of the semantic content of the work: blue, available in multiple shades, is the color of the typical Tuareg clothing, the yellow is that of the desert, the green of the Niger river, the white of the Arabs.

Other cultural influences from West Africa and elsewhere have fuelled his aesthetic research: music, dance and even the Korodouga, a highly respected brotherhood in Mali and Ivory Coast, which uses satire to challenge power and behaviour social. Their costumes are dotted with amulets, fetishes or abandoned objects and plastic, making these "sacred buffoons a sort of landfill for society", says the artist, who praises their total freedom of expression. The colourful textile stripes covering his "canvases" have become a favourite form of expression for Konaté, with some critics using the term "tapestry" or "patchwork" to describe his monumental compositions. The artist insists that he did not actually choose this vocabulary; rather he worked on his palette like a painter. Konaté's work is poetic, mythical and ancestral, which takes fabric as a medium of expression and communication, a key element of his artistic research and of a narrative of singular evocative force.

“The process of working leads to discoveries or solutions,” he states simply. “I never thought I would stop painting acrylics or oils.” But this vibrant and moving material, common and familiar throughout the world, especially in Mali, a major producer of the widely exported bazin cotton fabric, has the advantage of creating secret correspondences between everyday reality and abstraction. A chaotic world, one that this great figure of the contemporary African scene tries modestly to translate, without attempting to take on a role other than of a citizen, who observes his environment and tries to find a non-violent way of showing everything relating to human suffering. A symphony of colours, a wide deep research through symbol and essence, this is the path Abdoulaye Konaté is crossing in his latest works. It’s impossible to look at his artworks remaining emotionless. Konaté’s compositions bring us in a universe filled with symbols, in an atmosphere charged of significances. Even if the political issue is cast aside, his language is unchanged, always strong, substantial, stripped of every unfoundamental decoration, forged to speak of Human and Nature through a simple medium, such as the colour. The language of colours is made of extrinsic impressions but also internal affections.

“We are symbols and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and tools, words and things, birth and death, all are emblems; but we sympathize with the symbols, and, being Infatuated with the economical uses of things, we do not know that they are thoughts. The poet, by an ulterior intellectual perception, gives them a power, which makes their old use forgotten, and puts eyes and a tongue into every dumb and inanimate object”.

- Abdoulaye Konaté

The power of these compositions, where traditional and contemporary layers of interpretation intersect where each of the thousands of pieces of fabric seems to find its perfect place, as if entrusted with a testimony that is essential to the harmony of a whole.