The Melrose Gallery chooses Ivorian painter Pascal Konan Artist of the Month
By Citylife Arts Writer
This month, the spotlight falls on Pascal Konan, a visual artist from Ivory Cost who has been chosen Artist 0of the Month by Sandton based gallery The Melrose Gallery. Pascal is June artists of the month, and this puts the spotlight on his art and art practice.
Pascal’s whole approach lies both in the exaltation of a happy childhood spent in one of the suburbs of Abidjan, but also in the testimony of the precariousness of an Africa grappling with urbanity.His contributions to the art world and his unwavering dedication to fostering humanism through individual action have solidified his position as an influential and highly respected artist both within and beyond the boundaries of Abidjan, Côted’Ivoire.
In an era marked by deepening social divisions and the erosion of the human condition, Pascal passionately advocates for individual action as a means to concertize humanism, as revealed in his artistic expression. His works stand as a testament to his unwavering commitment to uplifting the human experience and provoking introspection.
Pascal has been honoured with numerous accolades, including the prestigious UEMOA0 prize for the 10th Biennale of DAK’ART in 2012. In 2014 he was awarded the esteemed Christian Latier prize, which granted him the opportunity to embark on a residency at the esteemed Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris.
Pascal Konan was born in 1979 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. A graduate of the National School of Fine Arts in Abidjan, Pascal Konan now teaches painting there while practicing his artistic activity. Staging the daily life of the inhabitants of Abidjan, the artist interprets a particular emotion, that produced by African cities through their affluence and the exuberant profusion of sounds and smells that characterize them.
Understanding the human soul leads Pascal to explore the streets of Ivory Coast in search of collective life, of the spirit, which handles the game between what is open to the eye and what is hidden below. How identities develop from interactions to the movement that begins as public, then becomes private and returns to the public. Pascal’s work reflects on interior and exterior lives using the relationship to space as a source of belonging, where the African street serves as a metaphor of identity in continuous movement, where the physical private and public spheres are hardly divided into separate concepts and in a context where social divisions and the degradation of the human condition are accentuated.