Pascale Marthine Tayou
Tayou’s abstract compositions in chalk and charcoal evoke, he says, his “Ying and Yang”, with their juxtapositions of colour and darkness. To all his works, Tayou assigns a self-referential meaning as meditations on the artistic process. Art and life, he suggests, are inextricably linked. A piece of chalk is a piece of chalk and much more besides – a tool of knowledge, of communication, a dusty pigment, a colour made object. While his works might first appear fortuitous, meaning is transcribed in their material by intent rather than accident. Such is Chalk or charcoal S, an arrangement of chalk pieces pinned to a charcoal black background. From a distance, the work recalls West African tapestries; seen up close, the image dissolves into its disparate parts. Light and shadow, colour and darkness – here, the artist finds a momentary balance. The fragility of the work’s medium, held in place only by pins, suggests the provisionality of this harmony.
b.1967, Nkongsamba
“The inspiration of inspiration,” Pascale Marthine Tayou says with studied ambiguity, “makes up part of my most beautiful secrets and I do not yet know how to explain the mystery that is the dreaming of the dream.” A nomad in life, thought and image, Tayou is concerned not with conceptual transparency but a tactile plurality. To the artist, all things offer themselves as material – cooking pots, children’s drawings, umbrellas, curios, national flags. He is drawn particularly to those objects “always in transit, always global” (to this end, the plastic bag finds pride of place in his many sculptural installations). His is a transcultural vision, where coinciding materials gesture to themes of migration, belonging, identity and a history of bodies in motion. In expression, Tayou’s work is various and fluid; in image, resolutely colourful. The artist collects the stuff of life – of his life – into a kaleidoscopic cosmology of the modern world, “an itinerary of a long trip into the heart of the universe of forms.”