Bordeaux + Art + Design, better known as BAD+, opens today and runs until Sunday 10 July 2022. With over 50 exhibitors.
BAD+ 2022 will bring a much-needed breath of fresh air to the art market as we will provide a new international stage for talented and innovative galleries. At BAD+ we create an inspiring and commercial environment where exhibitors can offer something new and thought-provoking. Bordeaux is a beautiful city with easy access to many great collectors from the region and beyond. Located at the gateway to the Pyrenees in northern Spain and a short flight from North Africa and other Mediterranean locations, it is a popular destination for visitors from the UK, US and China.
Artistic Director, Jill Silverman van Coenegracht
BAD+ highlights include:
The Michael Janssen Gallery shows the work of the Kazakh artist Guldur Mukazhanova (b. 1984), who now lives and works in Berlin. During her studies at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Kazakhstan and textile and surface design at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, she decided to work with felt and textiles such as lurex, silk and velor. The continuous felting process gives her a strong connection to the nomadic roots of her ancestors while letting her question issues such as traditional cultural values, identity, feminism and globalization. Her works are a reflection of her Kazakh society, but also her post-nomadic identity and alienation.
Eduardo Arroyo (1937-2018), whose works are on display at the Galeria Alvaro Alcazar, is considered a leading figure in Spanish contemporary art. A painter and set designer, he is particularly known for his caricature-like depictions of characters imbued with scathing wit. A critic of the Franco regime, he lived in Paris for about two decades and his work became known throughout Europe. His Pop Art-inspired works, which often focus on demystifying famous figures, are coveted and today his work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, and Bilbao Fine art museum etc
Baronian of Brussels brings the collectibles of British artist David Brian Smith, an artist highly acclaimed by Tracey Emin and well reviewed in art publications such as Frieze Magazine, Art Review and Time Out, who lives and works in London. His paintings depict a dreamlike world in a rich color scheme that alludes to a rural setting, folklore and myth. The rough texture of the canvas, painted on herringbone linen, is reminiscent of traditional fabrics worn by both men and women in the countryside. His compositions are created with successive touches of oil paint, sometimes with small insertions of silver or gold leaf. Smith’s work is riddled with recurring patterns and stereotypical figures, such as that of a lonely shepherd and a man sitting, hat in hand, on a giant anthill. The latter represents the artist’s grandfather, a clergyman and amateur photographer who lived in India during the colonial period.
HdM Gallery, a leading contemporary gallery based in London and Beijing known for its particular focus on contemporary Chinese art, will be showing the work of Zhang Shujian. Specializing in exploratory expressionism, Shujian graduated in 2010 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he lives and works. He is a photorealistic artist who deals intensively with the human face in his drawings and brush paintings. The gallery also features work by Western-influenced artists, including that of Barthelemy Toguo (b. 1967), who studied at art schools in Ivory Coast, Grenoble, France, and Düsseldorf, Germany. Some of his paintings are in Jean Pigozzi’s Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC). His works include painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance and installation art that address issues of borders, exile and displacement. His dual French/Cameroonian citizenship allows him to explore the issue of belonging. Toguo often deals with ecological and social issues; Recently, his work has been influenced by movements and humanitarian tragedies, including BlackLivesMatter and the refugee crisis.
Beam Editions of Nottingham, UK presents a selection of work by artist Linda Karshan (born 1947) from the early 1990s to the present day. In the artist’s early works we see the emergence of grids and geometric structures through expressive markings in pen, ink and graphite. These drawings are the forerunners of Karshan’s most iconic works, the artist’s heavily reduced grids, which remain at the heart of her drawing practice, also featured at Bad+. Relying on precise intuition and coordinated breathing without the need for measuring instruments, the artist “executes” a geometry inherent in every human being. Karshan’s exceptional work is represented in major collections such as MOMA New York, the Courtauld, the Tate and the British Museum.
Galerie Afikaris, next to the Center Pompidou in Paris, continues to pursue its mission of promoting artists from Africa and its diaspora. One of its stars is the award-winning Saïdou Dicko (born 1979), who has been fascinated by shadows since he was a child working as a Fulani herder in Burkina Faso, West Africa, a former French colony. Dicko, who as a young boy traced the shadows of animals in the dirt, continues this artistic journey into adulthood, photographing figures against textured backgrounds, which he enhances with colour, collage and patterns, creating visual phenomena full of vitality. The self-taught artist Saidou Dicko (b. 1979) draws on themes of equality, innocence, sustainability and nostalgia in his work. Although Dicko’s black-painted silhouettes are universal, such works are perhaps also symbolic of his motherland, still overshadowed by its own colonial history.
In the art city itself, Bordeaux’s Bakery Art Gallery-BAG is an organic gluten-free bakery, art gallery and publishing house that also screens films. It is a place to meet and discuss art and gastronomy. Among the artists exhibiting in this space is Dalila Dalléas Bouzar (born 1947), whose work moves through the history of the place and the individual. Whether creating intimate self-portraits or reclaiming remnants of the Algerian War of Independence, Bouzar reinterprets archival photographs and documents through painting, drawing and sculptural materials.
The Bakery Art Gallery also features work by Emma Picard, who describes her work as “collaborative sculpture”. In this case, her associates are 500,000 honey bees who have helped create a series of double portraits on hive frames partially encrusted with their wax cells.
There will also be an extensive and related program of events throughout Bordeaux at the museums, local chateaux and vineyards. All details HERE
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Markus Westall
Mark Westall is the Founder and Editor of FAD Magazine, Founder and Associate Editor of Art of Conversation, and Founder of the @worldoffad platform
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