Galerie Daniel Templon now officially represents artist Omar Ba and is proud to present for the first time in Belgium, his first solo show with the gallery in Brussels.

Titled « Eclosion », the exhibition develops through an installation of painted cardboards, a reflection on interbreeding, power and the complex relationships between Africa and the Western world.

Omar Ba gave up the abstraction of his early years to embrace an ambiguous figuration fully open to interpretation. Painted on large corrugated cardboards, his paintings exhale a sense of fragility contrasting with the force of the subjects. With a seemingly chromatic simplicity, Omar Ba creates an uncanny bestiary, mixing abstract patterns and luxurious nature, with emblems of power or hints of war. Combining oil painting with gouache, ink and crayon, they follow a process of permanent hybridization. Titles such as “Historical Monument – UN” or “Plateform of Trust” allude to the issues of exploitation, interdependence, dialogue.

Omar Ba was born in 1977 in Dakar, Senegal. He graduated from the Fine Arts School of Dakar and then Geneva, Switzerland, where he has been living since 2003. Over the last 10 years, he has participated in many international group show, including “Mauvaises Graines” currently on view at Tophographie de l’Art (Paris), The Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts London (2014) and the Dakar Biennale (2014). His work is already part of several public collections, including Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) in France end the Swiss National Collection (Basel).