Bordeaux + Art + Design, better known as BAD+ opens today and runs until Sunday 10th July 2022. Featuring 50+ exhibitors.
BAD+ 2022 will bring a much-needed breath of fresh air to the art market as we will offer a new international stage to talented and innovative galleries. At BAD+ we are creating an inspirational and commercial setting in which exhibitors can offer what is new and thought-provoking. Bordeaux is a beautiful city with easy access to many great collectors, both local and beyond. It is on the doorstep of the Pyrenees in the North of Spain, and a short flight from North Africa and other locations in the Mediterranean Basin, as well as being a well-loved destination by visitors from the UK, the USA and China.
Artistic Director, Jill Silverman van Coenegracht
Highlights from BAD+ include:
Michael Janssen Gallery will be showing the works of Kazakhstani artist Guldur Mukazhanova (b.1984) who now lives and works in Berlin. While studying at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Kazakhstan, and textile and surface design in the Berlin- Weissensee Art Academy, she chose to work with felt and textiles such as lurex, silk and velour. The continual felting process give her a strong connection to the nomadic roots of her ancestors and simultaneously made her question issues such as traditional cultural values, identity, feminism and globalisation. Her works are a reflection of her Kazakh society and also of its post-nomadic identity and alienation.
Eduardo Arroyo (1937-2018) whose works will be shown at the Galeria Alvaro Alcazar comes with a reputation as a leading figure in Spanish contemporary art. A painter and set designer, he is particularly well known for his cartoon-like depictions of figures infused with caustic wit. Critical of the Franco regime, he lived in Paris for about two decades and his work became well known across Europe. His Pop Art inspired works, often focusing on the de-mythification of famous people, are sought after and today his work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, among others.
Baronian of Brussels will bring the collectable work of British artist David Brian Smith, an artist who has been spoken highly of by Tracey Emin and well-reviewed in art publications such as Frieze Magazine, Art Review and Time Out, who lives and works in London. His paintings depict a dreamlike world in a rich colour scheme, alluding to a rural environment, folklore and to myths. Painted on herringbone linen, the rough texture of the canvas is reminiscent of traditional fabrics worn by country men and women. His compositions are created with successive touches of oil paint sometimes with small insertions of silver or gold leaf. Smith’s work is interspersed with recurrent patterns and stereotypical figures, such as that of a solitary shepherd and a man sitting on a giant anthill, hat in hand. The latter represents the artist’s grandfather, a clergyman and amateur photographer who lived in India in the colonial era.
HdM Gallery, a leading contemporary gallery based in London and Beijing known for its particular focus on Contemporary Chinese Art, will show the work of Zhang Shujian. Specialising in explorative expressionism, Shujian graduated in 2010 from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing where he lives and works. He is a photorealist artist who examines the human face intensively in his drawings and brush paintings. The Gallery will also show works by Western-influenced artists including that of Barthelemy Toguo (b.1967), who studied at art schools on the Ivory Coast, in Grenoble, France and Düsseldorf, Germany. Some of his paintings are found in The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Jean Pigozzi. His works include painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, and installation art to address issues of borders, exile, and displacement. His dual French/Cameroonian nationality enables him to explore the subject of belonging. Toguo is often concerned with ecological and societal issues; recently, his works have been informed by movements and humanitarian tragedy including BlackLivesMatter and the refugee crisis.
Beam Editions of Nottingham, UK presents a selection of works by artist Linda Karshan (b.1947) from the early 1990s through to the present day. In the artist’s early work we see the emergence of grids and geometric structures through expressive mark making in pen, ink and graphite. These drawings are the forerunners to Karshan’s most iconic works, the artist’s highly reductive grids that continue to be the focus of her drawing practice, also on display at Bad+. Relying on precise intuition co-ordinated breathing without the need for instruments of measure, the artist ‘performs’ a geometry that is innate within every human being. Karshan’s extraordinary work features in major collections such as MOMA New York, the Courtauld, Tate and the British Museum.
Afikaris Gallery, next to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, continues to pursue its mission of promoting artists from Africa and its diaspora. One of its stars is the award-winning Saïdou Dicko (b.1979) who has been fascinated by shadows from his childhood days as a Fulani shepherd in Burkina Faso, West Africa, once a French colony. Dicko, who as a young boy used to trace the shadows of the animals in the dirt, continues this artistic journey in his adulthood, photographing figures against textured backgrounds, which he enhances with paint, collage, and patterns creating visual phenomena infused with vitality. Self-taught, Saidou Dicko (b. 1979) his works draw on themes such as equality, innocence, sustainability and nostalgia. Although Dicko’s black painted silhouettes are universal, such works are perhaps also symbolic of his mother nation still in the shadow of its own colonial history.
In the city of art itself, Bordeaux’s Bakery Art Gallery–BAG is an organic gluten-free bakery, art gallery and publisher which also screens films. It is a place to meet and discuss art and gastronomy. Among the artists exhibiting in this space is Dalila Dalléas Bouzar (b.1947) whose work navigates the history of place and the individual. Whether creating intimate self-portraits or recapturing remnants of the Algerian War of Independence, Bouzar reinterprets archival photographs and documents through painting, drawing and sculptural materials.
The Bakery Art Gallery will also show work by Emma Picard, who describes her work as ‘collaborative sculpture’. In this case, her collaborators are 500,000 honeybees who have helped create a series of double portraits on beehive frames that have become partially encrusted with their wax cells.
There will also be an extensive and related programme of events throughout Bordeaux in the museums, the local châteaux and vineyards. Full Details HERE
