GALERIE OPENSPACE
About the seller

Professional art gallery

Paris, France

Artsper seller since 2017 28 orders finalized

Paris From February 25, 2017 to April 1, 2017

Presentation
The Openspace Gallery is pleased to announce Build From Memory, the third Parisian solo exhibition of the American artist Augustine Kofie, whose work it has been representing in France since 2013. The title chosen for this exhibition which presents a whole new series of works produced in 2016-2017 (paintings on canvas and paintings and collages on wood) refers to our properly human faculty of acquiring knowledge and then applying it to the material world. The human being is defined by his capacity to manipulate his environment and to register in time. In a way, by drawing from our memory a set of partially altered and altered fragments (our memories and our experiences) to create new things, we build the future through our present actions and from the past. Some things are forgotten, others are acquired. Augustine Kofie continues to explore and deepen the different processes of creating new spaces within her work, while setting a new issue for each new series of works. The Build From Memory exhibition was born from the artist's questioning on how to create dynamic movement from a static basis (horizontal / vertical). The answer to this problem was given by the use of diagonals coming to create a rupture, and of perspective lines allowing to create a volume, a projection, an immersion or an effect of depth in the horizontal-vertical system. It is these ruptures that the artist “builds from memory” and which are at the origin of the title “Build From Memory”, because they are directly inspired by 3D lettering techniques such as sign painting or graffiti. “3D comes from an imaginary perspective, multiple perspectives and multiple memories. This classical composition and process of formal representation inform both the artist's collages and paintings. “Collage is the laboratory of my constructivist technique. It is a phase of discovery, recovery and preparation - the mosaic, the bonding and the transformation of materials. I go as far as possible to build my canvases, using matter as color, and paint only to accentuate what is already there. Each fragment is a survivor of the process of destroying time. Each contains a memory and represents a gateway to a specific time. Each letter, graphic element or color is a memory clue. As often, Augustine Kofie's paintings are first born in the form of sketches, but these are not projected or reproduced on the canvas. The position of the elements, the scale, the relationship between forms, negative and positive spaces - everything changes with the medium. Muscle memory comes into play again, no longer through the experience accumulated over several years of lettering, but rather through the practice of large painted walls in public spaces. “Today, I relax my practice on canvas a little,” explains the artist, “I paint as I would make a wall. I involve my body in the rhythm of the conception; I realize my paintings quickly, by repetitive gestures, using a pictorial technique that comes to me from the street, which gives them a more flexible and lively dynamic. Then I work on the details, using finer and finer tools; going from the paint applied with a small roller, to the broad lines with the spray, passing by wide brushstrokes and spraying of spray, then I refine and then precise with a very fine brush. It is this relationship between freedom of movement and control that has always interested me. »Born in 1973 in Los Angeles, Augustine Kofie discovered graffiti at the end of the 80s, immersed in the skate culture that surrounds him. Inspired by the shape and structure of letters, Augustine Kofie tames them, deconstructs them and then reconstructs them, with a real technical mastery of spatiality. Evolving into a gallery since 2002, his 2009 exhibition, Vintage Futurism (Zero1 Gallery, Los Angeles) marks a decisive stage in his career, laying the foundations for all his current work. An unparalleled mastery of scale and movement can be read in his works, all in lines and structured forms, while vintage interferes in his universe; from illustrations from magazines of the 60s which he uses for his collages, to the recycled materials which he uses as support, while passing by his choice of colors. Augustine Kofie collaborates with several American galleries in New York and Detroit, and has been represented in France by the Openspace gallery since 2013 and the cycle of exhibitions she has organized on Graffuturism. Augustine Kofie is in fact considered today as one of the most important representatives of this world movement and renews the approach to contemporary abstract painting.
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  • 116, boulevard Richard Lenoir
    75011, Paris
    France
    0980666394

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