Ouattara Watts: Ouattara in Paris

Ouattara in Paris is a solo exhibition by the American artist Ouattara Watts, which is the mediation at the crossroads of civilizations for world reconciliation. His work connects forms of geography and long-term aesthetic heritage, constructing complex dialogues between cultural and iconographic systems.

Watts' visual language is heart-stoppingly beautiful and expansive while always retaining a layered complexity of references, symbols, and correspondences. Composing and manipulating richly textured, richly colored painted surfaces with virtuosity on often monumental scales, and working more closely with watercolor and gouache on paper, and integrating collages of found objects and elements. His works especially deal with Abstract Expressionism and Neo-Expressionist imagery yet it transcends these categories entirely and instead introduces these points of reference into monumental, polyphonic aesthetic architecture.

Through the iconography he conjures, the artist points out interconnected histories and legacies, overlapping symbology, and searches for interrelationships. From an early interest in ancient Egyptian and Greek history and West African classical knowledge systems across the Dogon, Bambara, Senufo, Baule, Yoruba, and Dan cultures, he set out to explore commonalities in the world. The intersection of situational worlds and knowledge, and reactivating and making visible cultural groups that have been erased.

Ouattara Watts - << Ouattara in Paris >>
Date: 9 Jun – 29 Jul 2023
Gallery: Almine Rech
Address: 64 rue de Turenne, 75003, France
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