Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon

Artworks

Jocelyn Akwaba MatignonForet Xibalba, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
100 × 200 × 3 cm
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon736 The 16 Lords

2020

130x97cm

Acrylic on canvas

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon758 T18 Lords

acrylic on canva

65x46 cm

2020

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon742 T02 Lords

acrylic on canva

65x46 cm 

2021

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon754 T14 Lords

acrylic on canva 

65x46 cm 

2020

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon747 T07 Lords

acrylic on oil

65x46 cm 

2021

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon759 T19 Lords

acrylic on canva 

65x46 cm 

2021

 

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon
Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon

Biography

Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon was born on December 25, 1961 in Pointe à Pitre in Guadeloupe. He left his island and arrived in the North of France at the age of 4. Francis his adoptive father, who during the Algerian war drew postcards and letters of the soldiers, initiated very young to drawing and painting which allowed him very early develop artistic sensitivity. After studying computer science and a career in this field, he turned to the profession of blower of glass and becomes master glassmaker. Having toured this technically very difficult area and driven by willpower to express something other than artisanal creation, at 28, he joined the École d'Art de la Roche on Yon en Vendée then the School of Fine Arts in Angers. The School of Fine Arts is for him a revelation and a wealth in his personal quest. The knowledge of the History of Art and the great masters of painting triggered in him a fascination with pictorial art and a desire to contribute, participate and enrich the path of artistic research. He visits most of the museums in Paris, Belgium, England, Italy, Holland, Spain, of Portugal and also goes to discover the painters of Eastern Europe and Morocco. Wifredo Lam, Caravaggio, Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel, Jackson Pollock and most of the painters postwar Americans are his inspirational artists. In 1993, curator, he organized with the group of artists "Trames" of which he is founding member, his first major collective exhibition as part of the Rings of the Memory. This "Cimarron" exhibition presents the work of a dozen painters from Great Caribbean at the castle of the Dukes of Brittany in Nantes. His first trip to Africa in Burkina Faso, as a photographer, will take him several years later to work on the spirit of the African mask. In 1995, he moved to a large workshop in Nantes, which belonged to the Royal Company of Luxury. This workshop becomes a place of exchanges and interdisciplinary meetings. His first period of work "the spirit of the earth" is a plastic research based on the use in his painting of natural elements of the forest. In 1997, he won the 1st Prize for "Art on the Move" in Vendée and then in 1999 the 1st Prize for Painters d'Outre-Mer in Paris.

In 1998, he exhibited his works at Galerie Oudin in Paris with Wifredo Lam and Henri Guédon. That same year, he began his Amerindian quest following a dream. He therefore undertakes to study in depth the whole spirituality of the Native American world. In 2003, he returned to his native country to paint and work. In 2009, he incorporated his dreamlike character the “Kioukan” into his painting. In 2010, he made his first trip to Guatemala. For him, this will be the realization of his years of theoretical research. He then integrated into his painting the symbolic ensemble of Mayan and Native American spirituality. Around 2011, his pictorial technique was enriched with a work of photos retouched on a computer then transferred to the canvas background. It also introduces on certain works of phosphorus for night vision. Since 2012, he has been creating an artistic installation in the form of a Native American medicine wheel. In 2016, he was selected by the French Institute in Seoul, for the France-Korea year, which celebrates the 130th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations. He presents about forty works in a solo exhibition "From Infinity to Center" at the prestigious Korea Foundation Seoul Gallery. In 2017, he made his first artistic residency in Guatemala for 3 months. He paints a fifteen large canvases incorporating the colors used for the facades of the houses as well as the volcanic ash from the neighboring volcano “el fuego”. He is going back in 2019 for a “Aguas Calientes” exhibition in Antigua de Guatemala at the Spanish Cooperation which hosts more than 21,000 visitors. For the past ten years, he has been working in schools within the framework of workshops artistic. It also offers conferences on the theme of Mayan cosmogony and Native American symbolism in correspondence with his artistic work. Currently, artist Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon lives and works in Guadeloupe.

 

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions:
2014_”Les 33 de Bon Gré”, Guadeloupe et Paris
2014_”Les chercheurs de l'existence”, médiathèque du Lamentin, Guadeloupe
2012_Etablissement Claude Blandin, "Joby Bernabé & Jocelyn Akwaba-Matignon", Jarry , Guadeloupe
2009_« à la reprise », Le jardin de Malanga, Trois-Rivières, Guadeloupe
2003_« Mass & bwa bwa », Galerie Modub'Art, Paris
2001_« l'esprit de la terre », Le temple du goût, Nantes
1999_Château de Gisors, Normandie
1996_Espace d’Art contemporain Onyx, St Herblain
1996_Conseil de l’Europe, Strasbourg
1992_Village d'artistes de Rablay sur Layon Less