NEW YORK: Aimé Mpané

Aimé Mpané, Looking the Other Way, 2013, mixed media on wood, 74x73 inches, 188x185cm. Image via skotogallery.com.

The Rape (Le Viol)

February 28 – April 13, 2013

SKOTO GALLERY

529 West 20^th Street

New York, NY

Skoto Gallery is pleased to present The Rape (Le Viol), an exhibition of recent sculpture and mixed media work by the Congolese-born artist Aimé Mpané who divides his time between Kinshasa and Brussels. This is his fourth solo show at the gallery.

Aimé Mpané’s recent work explores the physical and psychological complex space that exists in the fissure between trauma and the memory of trauma as a result of the brutalities instigated by colonial legacies in his homeland – DR Congo. For more than a century, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been plagued by regional conflict and a deadly scramble for its vast natural resources. In fact, greed for Congo’s natural resources has been a principal driver of atrocities and conflict throughout Congo’s tortured history. In eastern Congo today, these mineral resources are financing multiple armed groups, many of whom use mass rape as a deliberate strategy to intimidate and control local populations, thereby securing control of mines, trading routes, and other strategic areas.

Aimé Mpané mines the theme of power and vulnerability in society as he engages with the past and present. His emotionally charged sculptural installation is inscribed with individual and collective identity nurtured within the compass of history. His work reflects subtle understanding of context, respect for tradition and awareness of the crucial links between function and experimentation. Despite the fact that he does not avoid the significance of content in his work, they still manage to tell stories of hope and courage, of compassion and resilience that speak to the triumph of the human spirit.

Included in this exhibition is “Couple infernal (The Infernal Couple)”, 2004, a large sculptural installation that made its New York debut in his first solo exhibition “Bach to Congo” at the gallery in 2006. Firmly rooted in a conceptual framework that draws on art historical references as well as a deep understanding of the aesthetic and cultural character of the African continent, it projects a rough beauty that makes poignant statement on the pillaging and rape of the African continent’s cultural heritage which gained full force during the period of the colonial project that began in the late 19th century and continues. His work engages wide-ranging emotions, as they wrestle with the limitations and possibilities of the physical self.

Aimé Mpané was born 1968 into a family of master artists in Kinshasa, DR Congo. He graduated in Sculpture from the Academie des Beaux-Arts, Kinshasa in 1990 and obtained advance degree at the Ecole National Superieure des Art Visuels de La Cambre, Brussels, Belgium in 2000. Exhibitions include “Le Surrreel Congo”, Museum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund, Germany, 2012, Touched: Liverpool Biennial, England, 2010, “Perceptions”, Glazenhuis Amstelpark, Amsterdam; 2010; “Three One-Person Exhibitions” (with James Little and George Smith), Station Museum, Houston, 2007; Musee de Katanga, Lubumbashi, DR Congo, 2002, “Africa Sana”, Quai Antoine 1er, Monaco, 2001. One of his seminal sculptural installation, Congo: l'ombre de l'ombre; Congo: Shadow of the Shadow, 2005, Collection National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC will be included in Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium at LACMA, Los Angeles, July 7, 2013–January 5, 2014. Recent museum acquisitions include Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY and the Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Awards include 2006 Prix de la Fondation Jean-Paul Blachère, Dak’Art Bienniale, Dakar, Senegal and the 2012 Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Award.