Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah Biography

Owusu-Ankomah is one of the most famous artists in Ghana. His work focuses on the ways ornament and symbolism are perceived in different cultural circles.His paintings, many of which are quite large in scale, are immediately recognizable in style and make use of highly contrastive colours. The paintings show an eclectic mix of styles drawing on elements from different periods and distinct styles, including: early cave drawings, the Renaissance, pre-colonial African art and the graffiti styles of the modern age. Owusu-Ankomah exemplifies the contemporary African artist who is as at home integrating elements of the western canon into his canvases as assimilating forms from various African traditions. His device of using repeating symbols across the picture plane - many from widely divergent sources, Chinese ideograms to Adinkra glyphs - marks him as an artist who has gone beyond the simplistic assumptions of cultural specificity to the recognition that all contemporary art takes place in a common space shared by artists from all cultures. Owusu-Ankomah's large black and white canvases make impressive use of subtle trompe l'oeil effect where figurative forms - often, though not uniquely, male torsos - are both hidden and revealed by the calligraphic interplay of these repeated symbolic forms.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2004
- Museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf

2003 - National Museum of African Art - Galerie Peter Herrmann, Berlin

2002 - Paul Löbe Haus des Deutschen Bundestags, Berlin
- Kunstverein, Bad Salzdetfurth

1999
- Skoto Gallery, Nueva York
- October Gallery, London