Cheikhou Bâ: Migrations

About

The small sculptures, treated in the pitch-black wet-paint effect signature that the artist has perfected over the last few years, present intriguing figures that are part birds, part humans. Adorned with additions of found material - buckles, coloured leather, metal chains - these tragic and comic, scary and familiar chimeras appear in various states of contrived motion.

The paintings - all oils on canvas - consist of a collage of two or more either vertical or horizontal panels making what Bâ calls: “uni-polyptychs”. Motifs like balloons, or sudden streaks of bright colours are scattered on the panels around which scribblings, a motif of a popping eye or a swiftly sketched muzzle of an animal are introduced - raising questions. The whole canvas suggests a sense of swirling dynamics that is interrupted by the presence of the collaged panels, but not altogether stopped.

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