CAMEROON: VISIONS AND CONVERGENCES: FRANCK KEMKENG NOAH, FERRAUL FOSSO, BORIS GOBINA, MARC PADEU, ROBERTO PARE, BIDIAS ROMARIC, WILLIAM MANGA, WILLIAM TAGNE NJEPE
Bright colours, religious images, cartoon frames, urban environments: these are the elements that characterise the eight artists in the exhibition Cameroon: Visions and Convergences, Franck Kemkeng Noah, Ferraul Fosso, Boris Gobina, Marc Padeu, Roberto Pare, Bidias Romaric, William Manga, William Tagne Njepe.
Born in the early to late 1990s, they represent the new generation of artists in Cameroon. Their image of the world, art and existence has precise contours; it is not static, but dynamic; their ideal is a constant order in their relations with culture and reality.
The influence of art history, with what we might call post litteram mannerism, is present in all the artists chosen for this exhibition, in whom one can discern the tendency to conceive painting as a transcription of past works, which, absorbed and reworked by the artist's inner soul, have changed over time and produced new images from known images; like a metamorphosis that comes from the very ardour of painting.
These artists represent their culture, their colours, their identity as contemporary Africans in different ways and with different traits, but with a common vision and convergences that can be found in the colour palette and thematic substrate, in which it is possible to discern a social association.
The fundamental content of Marc Padeu's work is the sacred: not because of this, however, can his work be called religious. Images of madonnas, saints, or references to the deposition of Christ or the annunciation, become a pretext for portraying the vicissitudes of human kind. Religious icons are partly portrayed in contemporary clothing, and the splendid legion of Renaissance works is Africanised in the fabrics of the robes and the colour of the characters' skin. From the ancient, the artist finds an ideal humanity, the absolute form of an existence that in the present is limited and relative.
Ferraul Fosso also finds his inspiration in the classical artistic tradition, but in his
work, unlike Padeu, there is no dramatic surge, his representation of the sacred evolves in a theatrical form, his staging with the characters set in a wild and naturalistic context, chaining the spectator's attention with the evocative suggestion of the subject and the surface of things and space. An extrovert Ferraul Fosso, he treasures classical poses, but seeks in the splendour of nature the right juxtaposition of light and matter that envelops and dissolves the figures.
Within the group of Cameroonian personalities who set their sights on the works of the great masters of the past, we find Roberto Pare, who, although strongly different in stylistic structure, is equally committed to research and an emotional communication entrusted to the evidence of visual and colouristic values.
If art is born of emotion, in Roberto Pare this internal motion is manifested in the colour that spreads with momentum and determination in the eye of the spectator.
Among the Cameroonian artists who take a look at art, we find Bidias Romaric, who reappropriates the masterpieces of the late 20th century by recovering the most authentic patterns of the painting of artists such as Van Gogh, Keath Haring and Andy Warhol, to the point of appropriating their pictorial emotionality.
Bidias Romaric contextualises the iconic works of the great contemporary masters in his own time and in his own experience, the characters are street kids caught in their daily routine, but the works he inserts as backgrounds, he does not reinterpret them but incorporates them in their integrity.
Perspective is the word that sums up Franz Kemkeng Noah's work, at the heart of his composition are views of architectural landscapes and monuments. The spatial constructions are painted as a structural skeleton with a thin black line, transparent veils that suggest the depth of space with incisive delicacy. His technique is very controlled: straight lines without any thickness, at first glance it looks like a digital effect, but the graphic reduction that reduces the scenic spatiality to a few lines makes the perspective effect even more convincing.
If, in the collective imagination, Africa has in the suffering child its assumption, William Tagne Njepe does not contradict this idea, but in his work this concept is totally defined. The stories Njepe tells are not tragic, they do not show dramatic scenes of physical violence, but suffering is formalised in the viewer's mind. The artist takes a subject, focuses a compositional centre, a nucleus of the action; through a cancellation of colour, he brings the figures of the adults into the background, far away; with the opposite colouristic process, he brings the child forward.
The theme of childhood is also present in Boris Gobina, whose work is a work where the influence of other artists is palpable, the background immediately attracting attention, reminiscent of the works of the Ivorian Aboudia, who in turn was inspired by the great African-American artist Basquiat. The graffiti component in the development of African artists of this generation is very evident. Having broken down territorial borders, art is thinning its distances and the reinterpretation of images captured from the web mixed and blended with everyday life represents the perfect synthesis of their poetics.
If in Njebe and Gobina the child is the element that captures the viewer's attention, in William Manga the dominant motif of his work is waiting, there is no action, there is no movement the gestures are paralysed, blocked, granitic. The gazes of the characters impressed on the canvas are pensive, they observe with a curious air, as if caught by a foreign gaze that is entering their most intimate and personal environment. But it is the pictorial stroke that determines the movement and creates the space, and makes one perceive other images, near or far, similar and dissimilar.
