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Musical notes, eyes, nodes, arrows, numerals, alien vessels, African masks, and modernist sculpture—these are among the vast range of symbols that recur throughout Ouattara Watts’s paintings. His densely layered compositions reflect his omnivorous approach to the histories of painting and visual expression more broadly: a single canvas by the artist, its surface composed of textiles and other materials, may shift between gestural abstraction, color fields, and figuration. Watts’s attention to materiality dates to 1977, when he arrived in Paris to study art from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and began painting on tarpaulin. By the time he moved to New York City in 1988, he was already incorporating found objects and fabrics into his compositions. Across New Paintings , Watts sets his enigmatic signs among patterned fabric, papier-mâché relief, and paint-spattered floor cloths, holding the graphic and the gestural in tension.
Upcoming Dates
- Thu Nov 5
KARMA
549 W 26th St, New York, NY 10001Maps ↗ to KARMA
Uptown
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