Nil Gallery, a wind of Afro-optimism

©Prince Gyasi, The last one

During confinement you can find the works of the gallery on his website

Little by little, the Nil Gallery is making a place for itself in the contemporary African art market, which has been booming for 5 years. Emerging artists from the black continent are not the only ones represented there. But alongside visual artists from Asia or Poland, they hold the upper hand on rue des Coutures-Saint-Gervais, adjacent to the Picasso Museum.

Here we admire contemporary figurative and pop artists, often original and spectacular, never miserabilist. The audacious programming of Paul William and Hugo Zeitoun, two thirty-year-old gallery owners, is, on the contrary, representative of a joyful Afro-optimism.

So it is with the Ghanaian Prince Gyasin that in 2018, Vanity Fair ranked among the list of 9 avant-garde visual artists to follow. Apple, for its part, is collaborating with this 23-year-old young man based in Accra, who works on a lively chromatic palette in flat monochrome areas in tune with our century.

His “colorblock” photos taken using an iPhone or a digital Fuji push the saturation to the maximum and explore the color chart of black skin by celebrating their photogenicity. Like Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Prince Gyasina has the particularity of being synesthetic: he is one of those rare people capable of “ visualize sounds », who are " listen to colors », a associate colors with emotions.

Another revelation, the autodidact Alimi Adewale, Nigerian artist whose work evokes social issues: unemployment, neglected youth, mortality, freedom of expression, political oppression. Between traditional African sculpture and contemporary art, the minimalist faces (€18/pair) of this ex-engineer question issues at the heart of society.

Finally, the tables ofAbé Odedina, also from Nigeria, recall the complex and subtle world of her fellow writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Focused on Yoruba cultures, the work on wood of this artist who lives between London and Salvador Bahia (Brazil) revisits classic themes on the border of Greek and Yoruba mythologies. His paintings (from €5000) are part of various major international collections, including the British Government Art Collection and the fashion designer (and collector) Agnès B.

Nile Gallery
14 Rue des Coutures Saint-Gervais, 75003 Paris
Monday to Friday, 13 p.m. to 19:30 p.m.
Tel: +01 44 54 04 07

Text: Katia Barillot

02.11.20