Focus on Cinga Samson - fiscalonline
Communiqué of January 28, 2022
He is from Cape Town where he lives and still works: Cinga Samson, 35, has already accompanied his paintings around the world: Paris, New York, London or Miami…
His story begins about fifteen years ago when he enters a workshop shared by several South African painters, Isibane Creative Arts, on the outskirts.He has continued to paint fiercely since.He studied the techniques of the great masters, ancient as modern, in passionate self -taught and determined to live in painting.Now considered as a pillar of the CAP artist, he directs a studio there and participates in the local cultural boom.
Spotted by the Blank Projects gallery (CAP) in 2015, things went very quickly for Samson: winner of the Tollman prize for the visual arts in 2017, he exhibited at the Armory Show in New York in 2018 with Blank Projects, andParticipate in several group exhibitions (Hacer Noche, Centro Cultural Santo Domingo (2018), Kubatana, Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium (2019), and Mapping Black Identities, Minneapolis Institute of Art (2020)).
Then the Perrotin gallery opens its New York space (February-April 2020) for a triumphant exhibition: the young South African then becomes one of the most prominent painters on the art market.A few months later, the famous White Cube gallery made him an offer that will change the course of his career ... The official announcement of the artist's representation around the world by White Cube fell in May 2021.
Vanité et interférences sociales
On the site of the Perrotin gallery, we can read about the artist that “the desire, the aspiration and the celebration of the identity animate a large part of his work, for which he is inspired by fashion,heritage and works by Paul Gauguin and Andrew Wyeth, among others.»
Cinga Samson is effectively part of the great tradition of figurative painting, drawing bridges between classic and contemporary.This sophisticated, rich and textured painting unfolds in a troubled atmosphere with characters with empty eyes, without pupils, fixing us in a twilight light.They are beautiful, proud, seem to master their environment, impose by the authority of their presence.They wear Western fantasies, clothing or brands accessories, imitations whose men and women are fond in Africa, the artist first.Flowers, plants, fruits, are also very present.These attractive elements serve as memento mori.We are well in front of contemporary vanities, which attract as much as they put at a distance.
Built on symbolic, spiritual and social inferences, the images of Cinga reflect the complexity of South African society and question the identities. D’ailleurs, le titre de l’exposition à la galerie Perrotin n’était-il pas “Men are different, though they look alike» (Les hommes sont différents, même s’ils se ressemblent) ?
Pourquoi un tel succès?
Samson's paintings are beautiful, certainly.Above all, they are in line with artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Kehinde Wiley or Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose portraits of black men and women change artistic narration. Or, la demande est électrique pour cette “nouvelle» peinture dont les artistes sont immédiatement récupérés par le marché, surtout si le ou la jeune prodige est bien soutenu, ce qui est désormais le cas de Cinga.
Bien que nous ayons peu de recul sur les performances de l’artiste aux enchères (la première œuvre a été introduite en 2020 chez Strauss & Co Houghton, Afrique du Sud), les résultats obtenus aux enchères en 2021 laissent à penser que sa brillante carrière ne fait que commencer.In June, already, Phillips sold, in New York, the Two Piece 1 (2018) painting, for 378.$ 000 against an estimate around 30.$ 000.This outbreak of the auctions can partly explain the official announcement, the month before in the artist's representation by the prestigious White Cube with whom the artist organizes an exhibition for 2022.
D’autres résultats ont confirmé le puissant soutien du marché cet automne, dont un prix de 440 $ 000 obtenu à Londres en octobre (Lift Off, 2017, Sotheby’s), suivi des 323 $ 000 payés fin novembre (Ivory V).This last sale was held from Hong Kong as part of a new Phillips session organized in partnership with the Chinese company Poly Action.Market players have, in a few months, introduced Cinga Samson to all large places on the world market ...