Alexandre Diop

Senegal, 1995

            Alexandre Diop s a Franco-Senegalese artist based in Vienna, and is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under the tutelage of Daniel Richter. Diop builds his captivating artworks from a variety of found materials-commonly found in his everyday surroundings akin to the Italian arte povera movement-such as metal, wood, textile, latex, paper, animal fibers, burned fragments, gouache, glue, oil, pencil, pastel, leather, rope, varnish, nails, plaster, old car parts, rust, books and photographs. The effect is not unlike the work of Noah Purifoy or Louis Nevelson in that Diop transforms found materials into a unified and harmonious assemblage.

            Alexandre Diop talks about ‘image-objects’ when describing his work: His first step in the act of creation is to gather all sorts of discarded objects and materials during long walks through abandoned places near his home. Born in Paris, in 1995, to a Senegalese father, Diop moved to Berlin at the age of 18, and now lives and works in Vienna. In Diop’s eyes, Kehinde Wiley, who is probably best-known for his portrait of Barak Obama, represents a model of Black success. They have in common Dakar, where Wiley founded the residency Black Rock, but also a dialogue with past masters as well as with the contemporary world. 

You also write some of your own words and sentences on the canvases...

"They are either my own texts – I’m also a musician – or things I’ve heard in rap songs. Writing a sentence on the canvas is like embedding a conviction that I have at a given time. I create when I’m in a state of trance. It’s like a dance. I draw directly onto the canvas without preparatory sketches, sometimes with a visual or compositional reference in mind. I take a piece of charcoal and throw myself into it, no-holds-barred. I grab objects from the studio, mix, tear, cut, burn... I always have a nail in my mouth and a stapler or a hammer in my hands. It’s all about vision. Allowing things to happen and emerge."

Who are the characters you paint?

"It can be me. Or people who inspire me like Malcolm X or jazz musicians. They are not necessarily real people. They inhabit a world – a matrix – where they are not constrained by the same social and natural laws. Like an Olympus. They don’t need to wear clothes. They are boneless. Their anatomy and skeletons are exposed. The people I depict are perhaps from the future, the past, or another present."