Notes

Thierry Oussou is a self-taught artist who works in a range of media, most notably drawing, painting, wood sculpture, installation and performance. Widely exhibited internationally, his associative practice borrows from archaeological methods and explores the relationship between contemporary art and ethnography. In 2011 Oussou established Atelier Ye in Benin as an informal vehicle to bring together young artists: “[T]here was no art school in Benin and I wanted to go to art school.”¹ His idiosyncratic practice came to the attention of artists like Meschac Gaba and Barthélémy Toguo, whom he later assisted, in the process of “learning technical skills and conceptual ways of thinking”.²

Oussou is best known for his large works on paper, which are interchangeably referred to as drawings and paintings. His earliest works on paper were small in scale. Inspired by the slates used by Beninese schoolchildren in lieu of paper, in 2014 he started to experiment with larger works on black paper. The artist favours paper over canvas as his primary medium. “I make installations with twigs. I work with paper, which comes from wood,” he explained in an interview. “There is a link and coherence between all these media.” He added that paper’s fragility is another reason for its appeal. “We are all a reflection of paper. I am developing the concept of the fragility of paper in relation to human beings. We are as fragile as paper.”³

The gestural mark-making and neo-expressionist figuration in this large drawing are typical of his lauded practice. This lot derives from a series of new ink, acrylic and oil-bar works on paper made in 2018 during a month-long residency in Johannesburg. The artist’s psychological landscapes of a reimagined Johannesburg were well received. “Johannesburg is always changing – has always been in flux, in a state of continuous building and demolition, displacement and opportunity, since it was a mining town. Oussou’s contribution to the city’s visual arts ‘tradition’ is, aptly, capturing fleeting traces of the city in a particular moment in time.”⁴

^1. Anna McNay (2018) Studio International, ‘Thierry Oussou’, online, https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/thierry-oussou-i-would-like-to-make-people-think-differently
^2. Inga Lāce (2015) Interview with artist, online, http://archive.stevenson.info/exhibitions/nine_artists/oussou/index_oussou.html
^3. McNay op.cit.
^4. Chris Thurman (2018) Arthrob, 'Fleeting Traces: Thierry Oussou’s Before It Is Completely Gone’, online, https://artthrob.co.za/2018/03/13/fleeting-traces-thierry-oussous-before-it-is-completely-gone/, accessed 24 January 2024.

This lot has been selected by Curatorial Voice: Azza Satti.

Provenance

Stevenson, Johannesburg, 2018.

Private Collection.