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Painter | DR Congo
Bouvy Enkobo (1981), studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa, but left to pursue his career alone as part of “the new wave” generation conflict. Besides painting, he also experiments with collage, photography and video.
“My work raises questions about the issues I observe in urban life, the daily hopes and struggles, how people interact and form their flawed societies, to raise debates for a better future.”
Bouvy Enkobo (1981), studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa, but left to pursue his career alone as part of “the new wave” generation conflict. Besides painting, he also experiments with collage, photography and video.
His early work is characterized by fragments of urban impressions, where colors and geometric shapes bring rhythm within the chaotic and sometimes difficult living conditions in African inner cities or where he just withdraws in intuitive colorful abstracts reflecting the human state of mind.
Enkobo often shows the elusive and fugitive profiles that coexist in large cities: the time that passes and the human intelligence are thus intertwined. The expansion of the modern world and its evolution takes place without regard to individuals or their roots, and sometimes even to their detriment. These individuals are drowned in the mass, standardized; there is no longer any possibility of differentiating them. Enkobo represents those left-behind and the marginalized in society, in the form of stricken and prostrate characters.
In his latest work, Enkobo enriches his intuitive painting style with collage techniques and mixes in his own way of urban realism focused on the individual placed within a brightly colored chaos. He reflects on the subject of the territories occupied by man and questions the position of mankind and its evolution in this common space. He revises the traces of certain eras in history, in order to write a newly updated version.
Enkobo evokes the notion of space as a place of exchange and sharing. He questions heritages, which today divides, rather than unites mankind, with a view to offer possibilities of a return to fundamental values.
Enkobo has exhibited in DR Congo, Zimbabwe, South-Africa, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US, and won the special prize of the European Union at the Yango Biennale in Kinshasa in 2014. His work is included in the collection of the delegation of the European Union in DR Congo, Fondation Hirondelle and many private collections and recently outperformed on the online ArtNet Africa Present auction.
Solo exhibition, Anne de Villepoix Art Gallery, Paris, France
Reflux, OpenArtExchange, Schiedam, Netherlands
Songs of Sankofa, First Floor Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
Bouvy Enkobo, Pullman Hotel, Kinshasa, DR Congo
“Sois Prudent/ Take Care”, First Floor Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
African abstraction, Montague Contemporary Art Gallery, New York, USA.
AKAA Paris, via OpenArtExchange, Paris, France
Africa Present auction/ArtNet via OpenArtExchange, online
Collective Amnesia, Montague Contemporary Art Gallery, New York, USA.
Nova villa, Africa 2020, Paris Est Reims CELLIER, France.
Mobembo na Kinshasa / Voyages à Kinshasa, Far Away Festival, Reims, France.
Ghent Art Fair, via OpenArtExchange, Ghent, Belgium
Paris Art Fair, via OpenArtExchange, Paris, France
Back to Human, OpenArtExchange, Schiedam, Netherlands
Geuzenmaand exhibition, Museum Vlaardingen, Vlaardingen, Netherlands
Gallery Tiny Harlem, Latitudes Art Fair, Nelson Mandela, Johannesbourg, South-Africa
#InnerCities, OpenArtExchange, Schiedam, Netherlands
Fertile grounds, OpenExpo,/City Museum Schiedam, Schiedam, Netherlands
Antwerp Art Farir, OpenArtExchange, Antwerp, Belgium
“Master Art 2”, Kin Arts studio. Kinshasa
Workshop «Mixed Media Painting» Académie des Beaux-Arts
Formation photo animé par Roel Jocob’s, Académie Internationale D’ETE de Wallonie, Kinshasa
Stage Corps et espace animé par Dominique et Eddy DEVOLDER, Académie International d’ETE de Wallonie, Kinshasa
Formation de papier artisanal animé par Eddy DEVOLDER et Els, Académie International d’ETE de Wallonie, Kinshasa
Lauréat du «Prix spécial de L’Union Européenne». Biennale « YANGO » Kinshasa
Participant au Concours de Peinture «J’AI FAIS UN REVE» Ambassade des Etats-Unis en République Démocratique du Congo
9 ièm place du concours de la «Société Congolaise et la Francophonie»
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