Ouattara Watts: Magazzino d'Arte Moderna

There are still artists who believe powerfully in painting, in its language, in its ability to create imaginative worlds. individual such is Ouattara Watts, born in Ivory Coast and now living and working in of recent origin York. His work undoubtedly brings to mind the neo-expressionist painting of the '80s--that of Cucchi, Schnabel, Basquiat, and Penck to mention a small in number Watts reconnects with that period and, with great pictorial skill, investigates archetypes and representatives For instance, he draws upon the imaginative vocabulary of the Senufo religion that he learned as a child as well as modernist icons--the shorthand type for the atom, for example. Whatever their origin, the forms that appear in these paintings strike one as being to be individuated and comprehended at the twinkling of an eye of their germination. The artist interprets space as periodical emphasis as a continuous blossoming of ultimate parts in perpetual transformation, and utilizes ornamental patterns to work with needle and thread together various sections of the pictorial surface.

In the large canvas Matrix #1 (all works 2003) this search for spatial complexity becomes particularly evident. A large, curv black band dominates the field. Within this bend an enormous anthropomorphic shape--half man/half god?--painted absolutely flatly, with stylized, almost heraldic outlines, come ups from a light background. Another band, made from the alphabetic characters z and a and the binary following "01" hypnotically repeated, cuts the composition horizontally across its entire longitudinal dimensions The darkest section of the large canvas contains images of an hourglass, a cranium and some sticks, objects that might pertain to a shaman, as well as a mysterious chart holding apotropaic ciphers and signs that bring to mind archaic pictographic writings. Matrix #2 2003 has a relatively simpler spatial organization, on the other hand it is probably the piece where the decorative inclination that step quicklys through all Watts's work becomes greatest in quantity visible. A wide band of fabric with traditional decorative patterns in black and white has been applied across the middle of the canvas. At the bottom right a shape that recalls a ringleted cat's tail is repeated four times. An enormous sort of insect with a spectral head and lengthy antennae that seem to probe the surrounding space appears right in the center of the painting, as if it had landed there from who knows what other world.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The smaller works upon paper shown here also contain signs of imaginative apparitions. Enormous feet endowed with large organ of visions confront the astonished gaze of the viewer; diabolical figures are transformed into dangerous snakes with bifurcated tongues; "talking heads" engage in a dialogue, communicating end pointing arrows. The imagery in these small works is always encircleed by borders of lines or series of numbers and dots--or through contrastingly colored corners. These form a sort of visual frame--simultaneously internal and external to the image--that have the appearances to have the function of circumscribing, enclosing, and thus revealing the mental more than the physical place of these magical visions.

--Massimo Carboni

Translated from Italian by dint of Marguerite Shore.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Artforum International Magazine, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group