Yannick Ackah - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Thursday, October 12, 2023 | Phillips

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  • “What I see in African sculptures is beauty, a challenge, a complete story, a great mystery that I try to solve through my work with lines, brushstrokes and also with colour.”
    —Yannick Ackah

     

    Hailing from the Ivory Coast, Yannick Ackah is one of Africa's most prized young artists. The present work was exhibited at the artist’s first solo exhibition Yannick Ackah: La Poésie D’Existence at Galerie Melbye-Konan in 2022. Untitled shows 4 African masks and figures from varying perspectival viewpoints as they are placed on cabinets for display. These masks are set against an ornate and patterned maroon and crimson background. Ackah’s colour palette is masterfully chosen as brilliant hues of red, turquoise, green and white capture the beauty and vitality of his subject.

     

    Untitled is a tapestry of Ackah’s artistic, cultural and social influences and heritage. Pablo Picasso influenced the young artist; here this is seen in the multiple perspectives of the enlarged African mask and the green statuette, the use of materials like book covers, newspaper and magazine articles, and fabrics and cloths. Adding textural quality, these materials disrupt the picture plane and give the work a sort of three-dimensionality. In Untitled, Ackah reclaims the motif of the African mask, specifically that of the West African tribes like the Baoulé, Kwele and Dan, from modernist artists like Picasso. In this way, Ackah’s work makes socio-political statements on racism, the unhealed wounds of colonialism and cultural appropriation within the Western canon.

     

    • Provenance

      Galerie Melbye-Konan, Hamburg
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Exhibited

      Hamburg, Galerie Melbye-Konan, Yannick Ackah: La Poesie D'Existence, 30 September - 26 November 2022

    • Literature

      Stella Melbye-Konan, Yannick Ackah, Hamburg, 2022, no. 22, n.p. (illustrated)

    • Artist Biography

      Yannick Ackah

      • 1992

      Yannick Ackah (born 1992 in Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire) is a recognized International contemporary artist, and currently one of the most sought-after newcomer artists from Africa. His works have echoes of Picasso and Basquiat and were also immediately sold out at the Berlin Art Fair Positions and at his first Solo Show last September. At first glance, the works of this artist suggests his deep rootedness in the visual cultures of Africa. The engaging images seem to want to carry you away, in search of individual truth, but also the collective truth of a culture. For his compositions, Ackah draws inspiration from African sculptures and masks. The stylistic artistic reference to Picasso and his work is deliberately chosen, whereby Picasso's source of inspiration also leads back to African culture. Ackah himself describes his relationship to it as a mystery:  "What I see in African sculptures is beauty, a challenge, a complete story, a great mystery that I try to solve through my work with lines, brushstrokes and also with colour." (Ackah, 2021)

      Various materials such as paper, newspaper and magazine articles or fabric, which he assembles in his works as in a collage, create the typical surface structure. They contribute to the three-dimensionality and depth of his works and add a dimension of everyday life and pop culture, which the artist playfully combines with traditional motifs. If you allow yourself to embark on this journey, you will often recognize a play of opposites: The dialectic of life and death, mental abysses and dreamy playfulness, day and night, in short "the poetry of an existence", as the young artist himself states. But his own identity and the society in which he lives also play an undeniable role for Ackah. Socio-political themes such as racism and the deep wounds of colonialism as well as to the cultural appropriation can also be found in the works. 

       
      View More Works

222

Le Petit Prince

signed and dated 'Yannick .A 22' lower right
acrylic, crayon, newspaper, paper and fabric collage on canvas
138.8 x 146.2 cm (54 5/8 x 57 1/2 in.)
Executed in 2022.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£20,000 - 30,000 ‡♠

Sold for £22,860

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20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 12 October 2023