Traces: Gerard Quenum

Gérard Quenum (Benin, 1971) works across multiple artistic practices including painting, drawing, and sculpture. In his works on canvas, Quenum depicts loosely drawn figures that protrude on a blank picture plane, floating as ghostly and unidentifiable presences. Using a stark application of color, with dominate black brush strokes and splashes of primary colors, the figures and actions remain obscure through vague gestures, shadows, and body language.

Quenum references daily movement and interactions, such as taxis, school children, market women, and peddlers, as well as recreation and sports. In other works, he explores violence and corrupt political figures. Quenum adopts the role of the detached observer, depicting his surroundings not as a documentarian but in its immediacy and abstraction.