Aboudia

Robinsons Art Gallery, Knokke

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Executed in 2020, Le Docteur by Aboudia is a par exemplar of the artist’s visually arresting and hauntingly beautiful artistic production that draws inspiration from the local street culture of his hometown Abidjan, Ivory Coast. A rarity within the artist’s oeuvre, the present work depicts a single figure within a flurry of gestures and scrawls. Aboudia is celebrated for his heavily layered and brutally energetic paintings that combine an innocence and spontaneity with the portrayal of a dark dystopian landscape. Since the Ivorian Civil War in 2011, the artist’s urban topographies have been haunted by trauma; armed soldiers, ominous skulls and a populace hemmed in by danger. Referencing characters from his neighbourhood, contemporary ‘Nouchi’ iconography and homage to the more traditional forms of Vodou, Aboudia’s artistic production depicts a claustrophobic and oppressive world in which pathos and pain hang in perfect equilibrium.