“Dakar, Dakar”, or the posthumous meeting of two artists. The Magnin-A gallery presents the work of two Senegalese artists who are too little exposed in France. Both represent the human body in motion, but in a radically different vision. To the sculptures of Ndary Lo (1961-2017), slender iron walkers – who have been so much compared to Giacometti – men with arms stretched towards the sky or women’s bodies in bust, respond the paintings of Assane N’Doye ( 1952-2019), female bodies all in curves, undulations and flamboyant colors.
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From the entrance, the eye is caught by the large sculpture of a man who seems to fly away, then lands and assesses the size of a huge, slender man. Ndary Lo works with concrete iron, assembles and welds, in a refined style. The monochromatic colors are dictated by the materials, rebar and mastic. From the start, Ndary Lo worked with used materials – doll heads, soda capsules, kerosene lamps, rebar, horseshoes… Quickly, rebar became his preferred material. He is thus a precursor of a very trendy movement today, recycling, which crosses the world of creation but also society.
This posthumous dialogue questions Senegalese tradition and modernity, but also the power of roots. While they are almost of the same generation, the two artists have never met. Both graduated from the School of Arts in Dakar. There, the paths diverge. Assane N’Doye continued his training and career in France and then at the turn of the 1990s in the United States while Ndary Lo lived in Dakar, even if his artistic activities took him around the world. Far from his roots, Assane N’Doye is inspired by them while Ndary Lo, who lives in Dakar, seeks to free himself from them.
In the Parisian gallery, there are major sculptures by the artist, including the man with the fluid gait, a 2.4 m giant, a praying group, a thinker, but also a Trunk of Taaru (“beautiful” , in Wolof) and trees with hands that reach out to the sky. “The work of Ndary Lo is populated by sculptures, mostly in welded concrete iron, which we too often tend to reduce to his “walkers” while the amplitude of his reflection is vast, both in size, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, only in its sources of inspiration and themes”, insists Sylvain Sankalé, lawyer collector and art critic.
Much less known in Senegal, Assane N’Doye is however of the two artists the one who remains visually closest to his country of birth. Left at the age of 22 to continue his studies in France, at the National School of Decorative Art in Aubusson. Quickly, he joined a workshop of artists specializing in textile design. He continued his work as an artist in multiple forms and developed, from the end of the 1970s, a work of painting drawing on his roots. Committed artist, in 1982, he co-founded and chaired the association Wifredo Lam (famous Cuban painter) whose motto was “to be heard”, in order to give non-European artists the place they deserved in art. contemporary in France.
Nicole Guez, sociologist and art critic, wrote of him that he is “one of the most gifted artists of his generation […], he notably created posters for both Amnesty International and the Center Pompidou, illustrated books, made fabric printing models for major Parisian fashion houses… He paints, draws, colors with the same ease and goes playfully from paper to canvas”.
The exhibition “Dakar, Dakar”, offers us a beautiful posthumous meeting between two great Senegalese artists.
* Galerie Magnin-A – Ndary Lo and Assane N’Doye “Dakar, Dakar” until May 20, 2023. 118, boulevard Richard-Lenoir, 75011 Paris
