The exhibition Classique! gathers artworks inspired by masterpieces from art history. Whether they are key artworks or lesser known, they all paved the way for the artists who succeeded them, as they keep marking their visual writing. Inherited from the long tradition of appropriation art, they embody the personal reinterpretation of painting, photograph - and even sometimes artistic movements - by their author.
The exhibition Classique! asks: “How does what we see influence our imagination?” And testifies the way artworks designed in the past never die and keep living through contemporary creation. These images penetrate our unconscious and become a part of our visual culture. Shapes, colours and atmosphere are many factors which taint the art from any time and of any type - including visual arts, cinema and performance. The influences intertwine and compose a new language. The mix of cultural and visual elements taking place is in the continuity of the artworks they draw inspiration from - sometimes themselves the result of the adoption of a myth or an older work: from the antique maenads to Christian iconography.
Sometimes imbued with the scene and with energy being displaced, sometimes by the artistic approach: Moustapha Baidi Oumarou, Matthew Eguavoen, Salifou Lindou, Omar Mahfoudi, Richard Mensah, Ousmane Niang, Jean David Nkot, Nana Yaw Oduro, Hyacinthe Ouattara, Daniel Pengrapher and Marc Posso reinterpret works that participated in building the history of art and echo their own practice. The artists felt free to change the original medium or the size. They took possession of the work in order to make it theirs.
