ART PARIS 2022

Known for his design furniture as well as his purely artistic creations, French artist Vincent Dubourg always claimed that art is meant to be a part of everyday life. From his studio deep in the countryside, which in itself is like a monumental piece of art, the artist creates works imbued with a strong connection with nature. Sculptural works made of bronze, terracotta, aluminium, steel, wood, and more, playing on fundamental oppositions like empty and full, earthly and celestial, masculine and feminine, wild and tame. Those are for Dubourg the ingredients of a new revolutionary aesthetic.

Vincent Dubourg was born in Paris in 1977. He studied at École de Design de Nantes. His work has been shown in major institutions such as the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A monographs on his work was published by Norma Editions in 2017. He lives in Felletin, France.

British artist Robert Montgomery is interested in “what it feels like on the inside to live in Late-Capitalism”. Often poetic, many of his works are displayed outdoors in a variety of mediums: posters, LED signs, woodwork set on fire in the context of performances. In his studio, he turns to painting, watercolor or wood carving. Tinted with melancholy, his words are sometimes charged with a sense of existential doom. Sometimes also beaming with hope. Ecology, war, apathy, alienation are some of his recurrent themes, with this underlying idea that “art can be transformative”.

Robert Montgomery was born in Chapelhall, Scotland, in 1972. He was selected to represent the United Kingdom at the Lyon Biennale of contemporary art (France) in 2011, the Kochi Biennale (India) in 2012, and the Yinchuan Biennale (China) in 2016. He has produced large-scale light installations in the public space in various European cities like Berlin, London, Paris, Athens, and more. His work has been presented at the Aspen Art Museum (USA), the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center (USA), or the Cer Modern Museum (Ankara, Turkey). His works are in the permanent collections of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Albright Knox Museum (USA). He lives in London.

“I learned drawing because I love to tell stories,” says Rakajoo. All at once painter, animation designer and boxing champion, this multifaceted artist creates acrylic and oil paintings that can be described as condensed narratives. He plays with perspective to better capture the gaze of the viewer, sometimes making allusions to artists he admires and who have influenced his thinking, like Vermeer or Whistler. He introduces variations that combine the codes of comics and animation movies with his pictorial practice to create a world endowed with its own graphic coherence.
 
Baye-Dam Cissé a.k.a. Rakajoo graduated from the Art & Image department of Kourtrajmé School, founded by director Ladj Ly and JR. It was after returning to his roots in the land of his origins that he decided to take on his pseudonym. Spotted for the first time in 2008 within his boxing club where he painted a mural, in December of the same year he participated in an exhibition on the theme of sport, at the request of the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation. Various group exhibitions followed, including one at the Palais de Tokyo in 2020, "Jusqu'ici tout va bien." In March 2021, he held his first solo exhibition, Les Trois Châteaux, at Danysz gallery. His second solo show at Danysz - Shanghai is forthcoming this year in April.

“An archeology of the present” is how Alexandre Farto, a.k.a. VHILS, defines his work. The practice of the Portuguese artist reminds you of an excavation process in which his works appear like remnants recovered from the past, like ancient frescoes saved from oblivion. This archeology of the present is embodied by portraits of men and women, anonymous people for the most part. A poignant way of recalling the human reality at the core of the development of cities and infrastructures, and a way of highlighting this network of interdependencies that connect each community with the wider world.

Alexandre Farto, a.k.a. VHILS, was born in 1987 in Portugal. He became active in Lisbon in the early 2000s in the world of graffiti artists. In 2008, he was invited by Banksy to participate in the Cans Festival in London, where his work was immediately hailed as one of the most innovative in recent years on the urban art scene. He now regularly presents exhibitions in major institutions around the world, such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, or the Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, where his first monographic exhibition in the United States was held in 2020. He lives and works between London and Lisbon.