Gopal Dagnogo presents new work in the group show ‘Guess who is coming to dinner’ in the Richard Taittinger Gallery in New York
From July 16 until August 23, 2015.
Untitled, 2015.
About:
Dagnogo mostly makes large, colorful paintings. In free, almost slapdash brushstrokes. Figuration and abstraction fight for precedence. The canvases are painted in layers. Sometimes the figurative elements are for the most part painted on lower layers, and then sometimes these are on top. The various layers have a high degree of transparency. The bottom layers always remain (partially) visible. This not only enables him to bring space into his work, but also mystery. It arouses my curiosity.
Untitled, 2015.
This way of working reminds me of the Dutch/American artist Willem de Kooning. He uses similar colors, bright but soft. Contrasting with the forceful gesture. His expressionist style of painting has the same fluent, carefree character. The figuration never entirely disappeared from De Kooning’s work, either. ‘Two Figures in a Landscape’ (1967) for instance – from the Stedelijk Museum collection in Amsterdam – justifies the comparison in my opinion.
Panoramic Still Life, 2015.
And yet there is also a significant difference between the two artists. De Kooning lacks the engagement that is what gives Dagnogo’s work an extra dimension. Partially hidden behind or above the carefree brushstrokes objects or animals can be seen, the presence of which cannot immediately be explained. Trainers, sneakers, slippers, Louis Seize furniture, pheasants, chickens, (liquor) bottles, glasses, beer cans, Heinz cans, Tabasco bottles. Just in outline or fully colored in. Sometimes cryptic texts are dimly filtering through. They look like calculations. Could be of anything. It seems as if he is consciously introducing everyday elements, in the same way that the Pop Art artist tried to lessen the distance between high and low. For Andy Warhol and his associates the introduction of ‘mundane’ objects was the statement itself. For Dagnogo they stand for something, they are symbolic for a particular society (as the image elements in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat stand for something, are more than their representation). A society he knows from his youth and which can still – even if times have changed and the circumstances are different – reveal its bad side. They must refer to his homeland, Ivory Coast. The history of his country since independence (and for that matter, before) is a history characterized, branded even, by the chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The initial prosperity was reserved for a small group in the south. Abidjan was then ‘The Paris of the Ivory Coast’. The Louis Seize furniture and the pheasants refer to this. In particular, the violence that has ravaged the country since the nineteen-eighties can be reduced to a consequence of the same problem. A more or less permanent battle between the people who hold the power and the people who have nothing. A consumer society from which one section of society profits, but where another has to appropriate it in order to gain any advantage. A society that places possessions above values, violence above civilization, intolerance above respect, and so forth. This context gives a different, more personal connotation to the everyday objects in Gopal Dagnogo’s work. (from essay of Rob Perrée on his works, published in October 2014 on www.africanah.org)
King Donkey (or whatever else), 2015.
