iMinnesota Street Project · Dogpatch
Unfinished Lines
Art of Contemporary Africa shows painters Papytsho Mafolo, Hussein Salim, Pascal Konan and Aza Mansongi, part of Nexus: SF/Bay Area Black Art Week.
Pascal Konan starts his denim paintings with bleach. He lifts the indigo out of the cloth until a pale field opens, then fills it with dozens of dancing bodies in acrylic and Chinese ink, tied together by fine threads. San Francisco gave the world blue jeans, and here is a man taking the blue back out.
Art of Contemporary Africa, the city's first Pan-African contemporary gallery, hangs him with three other painters. Papytsho Mafolo, working from Brussels, abandons lines mid-stroke on purpose and lays gold leaf behind his figures. Hussein Salim, who left Sudan as a refugee, builds colour up so thick the canvas turns to terrain. Aza Mansongi cuts and layers pattern into crowded heads. You'll tell the four apart from across the room.
No critic has reviewed it. Entry is free, and it's a selling show, with listed prices from $3,200 to over $17,000. AOCA is on the second floor of 1275 Minnesota St, open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 6pm, until 24 October.
Look for
Le maître d'orchestre 2
Look for Konan's five-foot square of bleached denim, where hundreds of magenta dancing bodies spin out from a yellow figure with raised arms, thin white threads looping between them.
Le Tunnel de la Vie
A lone man, his body a mosaic of tiny coloured shapes, stands with his back to you in a bright white doorway, a blue shadow trailing behind him.
La Rose II
Mafolo's four women with tall, sculpted hair, painted in red, gold, blue and orange, crowd a hot-pink square with gold leaf glinting behind them.
Under the Wing
Mansongi stacks three heads in cut planes of colour, the largest black and speckled with white dots, while a white dove with an olive branch flies past.
The Most Beautiful Drowned Man in the World
Salim's five-foot canvas of layered colour: a long yellow-rimmed form packed with purple lies in pale blue water under a sky crowded with scribbled symbols.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want photography or sculpture: this is four painters and nothing else.
Also at Minnesota Street Project
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
7
- Unfinished LinesCourtesy of Minnesota Street Project
- Martin Venezky: Process WorkLetterform Archive
- Type for All! Ten Years of Type WestLetterform Archive
- Caguiat Delacruz: The TrampCCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts
- Minnesota Street ProjectPigeonChickenFish / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Letterform ArchiveClyde Charles Brown / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary ArtsMariwlqs / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0