SOLY CISSÉ
Le Trait
“Le Trait” Soly Cissé
Introduction “Dreams and reality are differentiated by the notion of time, but they speak of the same thing” – Cissé
Le Trait, (The Line), like a portal where the imagined, spiritual and secular convene, is Cissé's expression of the stages of the materialisation of his thoughts. He uses collage, uninhibited line drawing and gestural abstraction as a process to rediscover the foundation of his practice, and at the same time uncover newness within it.
Produced in what Cissé describes as; 'an ecstatic state' his compositions discover a place, that is no place, far from reality. His untamed strokes and erupting colours, from which animated figures, dancing shadows and anthropomorphic creatures emerge and merge into one another, create endless planes of collective narratives.
Describing these narratives, Cissé explains: “I think and reflect a lot about humans and their relationships. Relationships between humans, the confrontation between humans and nature, humans and religion and then I challenge myself and experiment.”
Artist Biography
Soly Cisseì (1969) a mixed media painter and sculptor from Dakar, is one of Senegal's most celebrated artists. He graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Dakar, 1996. Cisseì 's artworks are profoundly inspired by and contextualised by his upbringing. He grew up during an epoch of transition, following Senegal's period of social and political unrest, where art served as a mode of social activism and self-expression for the disenfranchised. His work intuitively explores notions of duality and repetition; tradition and modernity, the spiritual and the secular. Cisse'ì s spontaneous painterly movements, textured accents and neo-expressionistic techniques form depictions reflective of the dissolution of society's moral thresholds, shifts attributable to globalisation and modernisation. Shapeless human characters distort into anthropomorphic shadows of the other self; identities lost in translation from the past to the contemporary, and abstract lines and bold strokes of contrasting hues intersect, creating a layered configuration of Cisse'ì s mythical visions. Recognized as 'one of today's ambassadors for Senegalese culture' (Khalifa Ababacar Sall -Mayor of Dakar), Cissé's paintings, drawings and sculptures have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Africa, Europe and the America's. He has exhibited in the biennale's of Sao Paulo, Havana and Dak'art, and was featured in the highly acclaimed traveling exhibition; Africa Remix curated by Simon Njami. Le Trait (January 2016) marks the first solo exhibition in London of Cisse'ì s collage works.
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