PARIS.- For his first solo show in France, Gareth Nyandoro has produced an installation inspired from the urban space. Ephemeral sales sites, such as the stands of the Parisian “bouquinistes’’ (booksellers) on the banks of the Seine, are misappropriated and reused as exhibition’s elements. The works on paper which are deployed there are inhabited by famous African football players. These at once graphic and sculptural scenes bring to mind references to the sporting life and, by extension, Africa’s social and political organisation. The artist’s drawings, hung, incised and in part stretched out on the floor, are extended into sculptures and “allow for a connection of the representation to the world and to the visitors”. They are an invitation to walk around the works on paper, among characters depicted at life scale and amidst a space which seems to reproduce the world of the street.

In his work, Gareth Nyandoro takes an attentive look at business exchanges and social interactions in the public space. Scenes of life, which he extracts from his environment, are depicted in ink on large superimposed strips of paper. Once the motifs have been applied to the blank sheets, Gareth Nyandoro cuts and lacerates with precision the pictorial layers into long, fine strips. This play of incisions reveals the colours of the lower sheets. A network of lines from these cuttings amplifies the depicted movements or else disturbs the figures which then tend towards abstraction.

Born in 1982 in Bikita, Gareth Nyandoro lives in Harare (Zimbabwe). He represented Zimbabwe at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). After studying art at Harare Polytechnic College, as well as the Chinhoyi University of Technology (Zimbabwe), Gareth Nyandoro was in residence at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2014 - 2015). His work has been displayed in his first solo shows: “Paper Cut”, Tiwani Contemporary, London, 2017; “Gareth Nyandoro”, Galerie 23, Stichting Beeldende Kunst, Amsterdam, 2015; “Weaving Life”, Gallery Delta, Harare, 2013; “Mutariri”, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, 2012. It has also appeared in several group exhibitions, such as: “A Moment of Grace”, Modern Art Oxford (2016); “RijksakademieOPEN 2015”, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2015); “Trek: Following Journeys”, Smac Gallery, Cape Town (2015); and “Zimbabwean Contemporary Art”, Galerie 23, Amsterdam (2013). He is represented by Tiwani Contemporary (London) and SMAC Gallery (Cape Town).