Amadou Sanogo

26 January - 13 April 2019

The painter Amadou Sanogo pays a lot of attention to the nature of the support, from simple fabric to very thick artisanal cotton canvases from the suppliers of Bogolan. The canvas, its irregularities, its defaults .. are an essential element in his work. The canvas is laid on the floor without a frame in the middle of the studio. Standing in front of the canvas, Amadou Sanogo uses a pencil, his fingers, or directly a tube of acrylic to draw some figures and shapes that are always located in the center of the canvas. Everything is built and balanced around these figures according to his experimentations with colours. The colour of the background, specially prepared for each painting is very often monochrome. It is applied at last and eliminates all the elements that are not essential to him anymore.

Beyond an apparent simplicity, the artworks of Amadou Sanogo have an undeniable graphic strength accentuated by the presence of objects, signs, circles, dots, lines … all these elements have a meaning and add to the narrative. With his education, traditional and family values, Amadou Sanogo draws his inspiration from a cultural, political and social context that continuously makes him wonder and that he views with a critical eye. He is an artist of the world deeply invested and engaged in the Malian society between tradition and modernity.