NEW YORK, NY.- Gallery Vallois America is presenting the exhibition “Two months with Kossi Aguessy” through January 14, 2017.

Kossi Aguessy was born in Lomé, the capital of Togo in 1977 from a Brazilian mother and a Togolese father. Having earned his high school diploma at 13 (in New York), Aguessy is accepted at the very prestigious Royal Academy in London, England, and subsequently enrolls at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design whose graduates are some of the most illustrious names in the world of fashion: John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney – for whom he will design an iconic perfume bottle for her fragrance “Stella”.

Sculptor and painter, his career will gain momentum in 2008 with his acclaimed chair “Useless Tool”, created for the exhibition “Please do Not Sit” in Paris, France which dealt with the sacrilization of the chair.

In the United States he enjoys much success. In 2010, the Museum of Arts and Design (New York) showcases his talent at the Global Africa Project and a year later, Aguessy’s becomes part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Arts and Design. Concomitantly, his work also enters in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

In 2013, the Centre Pompidou in Paris dedicates a section to his work. Aguessy becomes the first artist and designer from Africa to receive such a distinction. In 2015, the Vitra Design Museum in Germany exhibits Kossi Aguessy, followed by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao which features the work of this singular artist through a traveling exhibition “Making Africa”, scheduled to be shown at the Contemporània Cultura Centre Barcelona from March 22 to July 31, 2016 and at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam from October 1 to January 17, 2017.

A political man, aware of the problems of his time, avant-garde, impertinent and passionate, he deals with substantive topics. His work with innovative mechanisms is as much engineering as it is within the realm of plastic arts. He refuses to sacrifice content for form: “I have always criticized the art of my time which assumes that intelligence is in opposition to beauty; both are possible and necessary”.

He operates under a blend of ideas, materials, influences, techniques, a way to live his hybridization which he defines as “global, architectural, multi-identified and bastardized’’, where memory, ancestral value is used as catalyst to a clearly futuristic vision.

Kossi Aguessy is represented in France and the United States by Gallery Vallois.