Gopal Dagnogo displays his “melancholic pleasure” in Paris

Born in 1973 in Abidjan to an Ivorian father and a French mother, Goupal Dagnogo, a professor of fine arts and graduate of the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, was introduced to aesthetics very early, in a world where gouache and turpentine smell. mixed: “I knew I would become a painter. I dreamed of freedom, music and painting. » Thanks to two of his brothers who also graduated in fine arts, he learned the technique, without forgetting his taste for reading art history books.

At the age of seventeen, he left Ivory Coast and arrived in Bordeaux, where he studied at the High School of Philosophy and Visual Arts. One of his teachers is none other than Jacques Appiet, a writer known under the open pseudonym Léo Barthes, influenced by the Surrealist movement in which he participated in the 1960s and 1970s.

“My direct encounter with conceptual art.”

“He taught me patience to deconstruct assumptions, expand the field of possibilities, and avoid falling into the trap of the facilities I had in drawing and painting. This led me, for example, to look at Basquiat’s work in ways other than poorly psychedelic Zigoto scribbles. But the real shock was my direct encounter with conceptual art at CAPC [Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux], In the fall of 1991. Suddenly I found myself facing walls covered in scratches 8.7 cm long [de large], Blind tarpaulin style. It was Daniel Boren. It took me a while to get over it.”The painter remembers.

In 1997, to train in other artistic techniques, he left for Burkina Faso, land of bronze wheels, to learn the lost-wax technique (precision casting to create a metal sculpture from a wax model). A residency that would have lasted for one month will turn into a three-year residency. “Honestly, I have made very few bronzes, but I do not rule out returning to them one day.”He admitted.

Influenced by the great Renaissance masters, Gopal D’Agnogo is also influenced by more eccentric figures distinguished by their boldness, emphasis of line, and strength of tonal balances: the Post-Impressionist artists Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh, the Austrian Expressionists Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka.

In his still life – the subject of classic and timeless painting – presented at 110 Honoré, fish and chickens occupy a prominent place. According to the visual artist. ” animals farm, Written by George Orwell, he wonderfully depicts these humanoid animals. Sometimes I feel like we live in the heart of this bitter reality. What if our world was just a giant chicken coop? Everyone is busy choosing their share. For the most ambitious, he is keen to obtain his neighbor’s share of grain, with the ultimate goal of enslaving him.

“I taste ‘pathetic shabby'”

For him, it’s about honoring the banality of everyday life, shedding light, and restoring the emotional value of things that at first glance seem uninteresting, but are essential to our ordinary comfort. His starting point is often one or more colors, without sketches or preparatory drawings.

When Gopal Dagnogo runs out of ideas, “There is always a way to ‘force’ inspiration. Just getting the canvas dirty. One task requires another. Then another one. The picture builds itself. My role is then limited to placing some recurring elements of our daily lives in the middle of this convivial piece: beer, sneakers , bottles, lemons, and strange mathematical formulas…”

In art as in literature, his tendency shifts towards damaged works. He prefers Emile Ajar to Romain Gary, and Ahmedou Koroma to Gustave Flaubert. “I like it when it hits, when it bends, like Bukowski or Cioran or Adyafi. I taste the ‘pathetic shabby’, when we know how to laugh at misery and cry at human beauty. He specifies.

If the plastic works of his contemporaries such as the South African William Kentridge, the Chinese Chen Zhen or the Japanese Yayoi Kusama caught his attention, he had just discovered the works of the Senegalese Fale Seni Su and “Daddy stays”.

Finally, upon entering 110 Honoré, visitors encounter an armchair covered in a pink and orange poultry print. On the first floor, they will find, says Veronique Reville, “An absolutely improbable installation has been carried out On sitein which Gopal indulged day and night, as in residence, and which presents a complete gallery of very impressive faces.