Born and bred in suburban Paris, Baye-Dam Cissé a.k.a. Rakajoo (1984) is a multifaceted talent ready to explode onto the international art scene. The artist started at a young age drawing comics with his friends, and eventually painted a gigantic 300-square-meter mural commissioned by his local boxing club. Mind you, parallel to his artistic endeavours, Rakajoo engaged in boxing on a high level between 2004 and 2017, and participated in the 2015 IMMAF World Championships in Las Vegas. Following a stint in the animation industry, a childhood dream which didn’t turn out to be as creatively rewarding as he expected, Rakajoo returned to painting and joined the Kourtrajmé School in the French capital, an institute founded by Oscar-nominated film director Ladj Ly and artist JR, to further his artistic education. Opening on Sat – Mar 20 at Danysz gallery in Paris is Rakajoo‘s very first solo show, entitled Les trois châteaux. The exhibition features twenty entirely new artworks, produced especially for this showcase, including both works on canvas, most often painted in oils, and on paper, as well as a sound or audiovisual installation extending the presentation. As a portrait painter who loves telling stories, Rakajoo effortlessly blends in references to Vermeer, Whistler and Freud, creating canvases as open windows to characters who bear an individual story but who are also part of a larger narrative, more specifically, that of Afro-Europeans.
Danysz
78 rue Amelot
75011 Paris
Telephone: +33 1 45833851
Tue-Sat 11-7
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
