“Territory of perceptions, Serenade of forms(Territory of Perceptions, Serenade of Forms) was a Gesamtkunstwerk which could only be conceived by a visual artist— the English word artist does not quite capture the totality of Ange-Frédéric Koffi’s practice. Usually read as a photographer – with a recent nod to “Foam Talent 2022,” an exhibition in Amsterdam that featured photographers who are “advancing the medium of photography” – Koffi was trained as a designer, artist and curator in various art schools in Europe. His practice is not just about the images he takes, but about creating the environment and experience around those images. True to the French sense of visual artist—artist in the broadest sense of the term—Koffi is concerned with the materiality of images and how they are presented, as well as their subject matter.
Since 2015, Koffi has been producing a photographic series entitled “The big tripwhich explores ideas of movement through images taken on the road in parts of West Africa. Iterations of the series have been shown widely, including at the Rencontres de Bamako—Biennale Africaine de la Photographie, an exhibition of contemporary African photographers in Mali. While some of the images from this series have been included here, in the artist’s first exhibition in his home country of Côte d’Ivoire, this inaugural occasion felt even more like a homecoming after a great journey more than one might have expected – a homecoming not only for the artist, but also for his ideas. Completely engulfing the space of the Galerie Cécile Fakhoury project, the exhibition began with a panel of three tempered and enameled bronze glass mirrors on the exterior walls of the gallery, immediately reminding viewers that they are potential elements of the exhibition they are about to enter, a theme that runs through Koffi’s entire practice.
The exhibition was dominated by the color orange which, in the Ivorian flag, represents both the savannahs of the north of the country and the fertility of the land. Koffi was born in the north, in Korhogo, in 1996. The patterns of wallpapers, carpets and other objects in the exhibition are easily recognizable from Ivorian architecture. Draped in orange curtains always slightly open for entry into the exhibition, the entrance was a deceptively simple invitation to a myriad of complex ideas. At one end of the space were two of the artist’s own suitcases, stamped with labels from his travels; one was open, showing African masks covered in tissue paper – a gesture that evokes the current debate around the return of stolen objects. “Territory of perceptions, Serenade of formswas also the title of Koffi’s master’s thesis at the Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne in Switzerland, where his research focused on how African art and design are shown and perceived outside their home continent. origin. However, noting a shortage of regional institutional spaces, he insists that exhibitions in Africa must go beyond the mere exhibition of images, also taking into consideration the forms and contexts of their production.
This show, and Koffi’s practice in general, is meta in that way. Some works, such as an artist-designed silk scarf, were displayed in their shipping containers. Photographic prints wrapped in bubble wrap lay on the floor and pictures were propped up on a library shelf. A motorcycle, I see you (On a motorbike, I see you) and Mercedes-Benzphotographs taken in 2015, were printed at about the size of the palm of the hand and shown at the level of the feet, requiring the viewer to bend over to see them. Derivative, 2022, captures yellow leaves and the shadows around them in beautiful soft light, the image blurred as if caught in motion. The work is not so much photography as the affect it creates and which the artist tries, with the total installation, to capture. “Territory of perceptions, Serenade of formswas a poetic provocation, a playground for ideas about photography and artistic production.
