GIDEON APPAH

Drawing inspiration from local scenes of everyday life in Ghana, Appah creates compositions that dissolve divisions between real and imagined, figuration and abstraction. Though informed by real places and people, his paintings can appear more mythological than representative, employing elements of Fauvism and Surrealism that complicate any clear narrative reading. Oneiric and reflective, his works elevate the simple act of gathering to the realm of collective memory, in which it takes on new and unexpected significance.

Using a rich palette and expressive application of paint, Appah subverts familiar leisure-landscape imagery to engage questions of identity, freedom, and form. He often begins with a wash of dark colors, returning to it with additional layers of color and highlights of white. In doing so, he starts with the shadow of the subject—its outline, its memory—before allowing it to fully emerge. The enigmatic expressions on the faces of his figures help to invite viewers into this interstitial world and experience its languid fluidity.

Works from Appah’s Swimmers and Surfers series—where figures populate seascapes of exaggerated color and buildings emerge from celestial backdrops—will be among the new compositions in his upcoming presentation with Pace. Inspired by the local surfers, fishermen, swimmers, and seaside architecture at Busua Beach and Kokrobite, where his studio is located, Appah paints these coastal scenes in a range of vibrant hues. While his figures are in various states of action—carrying a surfboard, resting, swimming—the buildings he depicts rise solitarily against the landscape. The slippage of time across the canvases as they move from day to night, dusk to dawn, enhances their dream-like mood.

Further details about the artist’s exhibition in New York will be announced in due course.