OOA Gallery presents Afro Seduction

"A recognized talent even before completing his Masters in Drawing and Painting from the Foumban Institute of Fine Arts in Cameroon in 2018, Anjel had the good fortune of being a 2016 artist-in-residence at the prestigious Les Ateliers Sahm in Brazzaville, Congo, where he was so fascinated by the city’s celebrated dandies that he began making these colorful characters the primary subjects of his vibrant paintings.

Having always been interested in figurative art, Anjel became deeply interested in the history of art while at the university, where he had a teacher who taught him the importance of perseverance in his practice and consistency in his work—two invaluable lessons that he has put to great use.

Forever grateful to his cousin Samuel Njomke, a local artist who gave him his first drawing lessons, and the prominent Cameroonian artists Jean-Jacques Kanté and Herve Youmbi, whose masterful uses of color and form continue to inspire, Anjel has achieved a sophisticated style of portrait painting, which packs a powerful punch.

Anjel was attracted to the Congolese dandies, who are known throughout Africa as sapeurs, for the way they mixed colors in their clothing. Followers of the Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People (SAPE), they spend all of their money on fashion. Many of the flamboyant participants are simply posers, who are living in poverty, while others are gentlemen civil servants. Like a religion, it has its own rules, which must be followed in order to maintain the respect of the community, where they are treated like celebrities. Dating back to colonial times, when house boys were often paid with secondhand clothing, this mode of elegant attire has become a part of African heritage.

Highly informed about contemporary art, Anjel readily acknowledges the Pop culture influence of Andy Warhol—especially in his employment of silkscreen as a painterly technique—and his admiration for the way such painters as Tim Okamura, Fahamu Pecou, Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley treat the black body. Masterfully making his work uniquely his own, he conceptually plays with the content by adding metaphors and ideas that take the paintings beyond mere physical realism and into a magical realm."

Paul Laster
 

Solo Show

7/5 - 20/6/2021

Opening 

Saturday 8/5 at 8pm 
DJ Session "Afro House" by Nuria Scarp