Born in the Ivory Coast in 1957, Ouattara Watts moved to Paris in 1977, where he studied and lived until 1988, when, at the insistence of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, he moved to New York. With its thirteen large-scale works, the “Ouattara in Paris” exhibition marks a return to the artist’s former haunts.
In his paintings, Watts acts as a sort of intermediary between the Earth and the abstract spiritual worlds he depicts. With washes of vibrant pigments, paint thickened with sawdust and glued pieces of African fabric, the artist brings together mathematical equations and symbols, moments of neo-expressionist figuration and iconography sampled from cultures around the world. Particularly captivating are the artist’s floating nebulae or seed-like shapes, which are painted with more precision and saturated colors, their nuclei ripe for germination. They suggest a greater creative force beyond our comprehension, as in the works of Hilma af Klint.
As the exhibition title echoes in the milky blue Paris: 19072023, which channels the work of Picasso The Ladies of AvignonWatts’ paintings effectively burst beyond the geographical parameters of the French capital, bearing witness to the intermingling of people, places and events across the trade routes linking Africa with Europe and North America. Dakar 1966, 2018, pays tribute to the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal, which included French artists. Meanwhile, the dense architecture New York 1985, 2023, with arching strokes at arm’s length of muddy, towering forms on a field of mango yellow, references the controversial Museum of Modern Art exhibition “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern” (1984–85). In these works, Watts seems to compare the meeting of artistic practices to that of cosmic forces, capable of generating and eclipsing worlds.
