Tegene Kunbi presents a sensational exhibition of canvases featuring idiosyncratic polychromatic pictorial motifs with a lucid, fluid aesthetic for a most impactful rendering. Until August 12, 2023, Galerie 1957 welcomes the striking visual statements of this contemporary artist of a thousand artistic panels for a colorful moment of discovery.
The exhibition “Meeting Points and Holding On” showcases Tegene Kunbi is mixed-media work following his recent residency at Galerie 1957 in Accra. He produced a series of bold, full-bodied works in the contemporary art space, made up of various canvases as engaging as they are irregular. Large and small, boldly coated with brushes, palette knives and thick layers of pastel, acrylic, oil paint and oil stick, Tegene Kunbi is works offer a particularly complex depth. In addition to this variety of techniques, the artist inserts rectangular grids of constant size into certain interstices, as well as materials from local Ghanaian markets such as hand-woven kente cloth or thin wax print linings to accentuate the complex touch intrinsic to these creations.
Born in Addis Ababa in 1980 and based in Berlin, the winner of the Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor 2022 draws his inspiration from the daily outlets of Ghanaian life and the inspiring waves of flux. Created with a keen sense of social spirit, color channeling and commitment, these works are bursting with life, with pigmentations that are both original and real. Tenge Kunbi declares: “Color is everyone and everywhere. Color is life. Color is identity and in itself, conceptually anchored“. This statement by the contemporary artist justifies his entire artistic aesthetic and his penchant for works with unique and multiple colors.
Having become a kind of spiritual conduit in addition to his stay in Ghana, which represented a veritable viable crucible for his artistic alchemy, Tenge Kunbi channels free energies and pigmentation to transparently cover his canvases with compact or fluffy textures, spiky geomorphological forms and regular and irregular aggregates. He takes into account details such as materials, colors, tones, texture, composition and lines to conceive works capable of conveying new emotions of color virtually imperceptible to the human senses.
The exhibition “Meeting Points and Holding On” presents a fascinating series of works created by Tenge Kunbi during his residency at Galerie 1957. Imbued with an appealing lightness and diversity of tones, the contemporary artist’s canvases plunge the art space into a harmonious ambience, where each one acts as a musical note for the composition of a gentle, pleasing melody, leaving visitors free to interpret it as they wish.