Symphony of colour: Abdoulaye Konaté merges music and matter at Blain|Southern
![L’oiseau rouge bird](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/cnybtijgqb2VHRJGm8g4Ao-415-80.jpg)
Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté is known for creating enormous works from textiles, including one the size of a football pitch. Fifteen of his more modestly sized, but equally impressive, brightly coloured textile tableaux will hang in London for the first time next week at Blain|Southern, having made the journey across continents from the artist’s studio base in Bamako.
The exhibition’s title – 'Symphonie en couleur' ('Symphony in colour') – illustrates the artist’s ongoing interest in music. His compositions in thread allude to the traditional capes worn by Senufo musicians from areas of southwestern Mali and the north of the Ivory Coast. Looking at the large-scale fabric pieces, with their subtle gradients of coloured ribbons and strips of hand-embroidered cotton, you can almost hear the mellifluous sounds of the marimba and the drums. Konaté understands hue as a master musician understands his instrument.
Music has a fundamental place across West Africa and in Malian culture and custom; it is both a way to preserve tradition and ancestral roots and an animated part of contemporary life – represented too in Konaté’s art, that combines a laborious, long-established technique and traditional materials with a modern visual language that is in dialogue with the history of painting.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, which focuses exclusively on works created this year, Konaté draws inspiration from his local natural environment. L'oiseau rouge, for example, is named after a bird he used to see as a child; while Composition vert émeraude et rouge uses a polychromatic pattern that refers to the region’s geology – rocks and minerals such as amethyst, epidote, garnet and quartz.
The exhibition’s title – which translates as 'Symphony in colour' – illustrates the artist’s ongoing interest in music. Fifteen of his more modestly sized brightly coloured textile tableaux have made the journey all the way from his studio base in Bamako.
Papillon (violet, jaune et ocre), 2016
His compositions find inspiration in the traditional capes worn by Senufo musicians from areas of southwestern Mali and the north of the Ivory Coast
Konaté understands hue as a master musician understands his instrument – his canvas becomes his score by using subtle gradients of coloured ribbons and strips of hand-embroidered cotton.
Composition vert émeraude et rouge, 2016
As a way to preserve tradition and ancestral roots, music has a fundamental place across West Africa and in Malian culture and custom, acting as an animated part of contemporary life
The exhibition focuses exclusively on works created this year, in which Konaté draws inspiration from his local natural environment and childhood.
Composition bleue (2 points rouges), 2016
Konaté’s art combines a laborious technique and traditional materials with a modern visual language that is in dialogue with the history of painting
INFORMATION
’Symphonie en couleur’ is on view from 2 September – 24 September. For more information, visit the Blain|Southern website
Photography courtesy BlainSouthern. Copyright Todd White
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
ADDRESS
Blain|Southern
4 Hanover Square
Mayfair
London, W1S 1BP
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
Take off: Mathieu Lehanneur's Olympic Cauldron rises into the Parisian night sky
The Paris 2024 Olympics’ opening ceremony was closed with a soaring cauldron spectacle that will go down in history
By Hugo Macdonald Published
-
Phaidon’s new Graphic Classics is a lavish greatest hits of graphic design
Graphic Classics is a compendium of seven centuries of visual culture, from the everyday and ephemeral to visionary works that reshaped our world
By Jonathan Bell Published
-
Birley Chocolate hits the sweet ’n’ chic spot in London’s Chelsea
The new Birley Chocolate shop, a sibling to Birley Bakery, is a confection of colour as delicious as its finely crafted goods
By Melina Keays Published