Bouvy Enkobo
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.
Portrait
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.
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.
