Gopal Dagnogo (b. 1973, Abidjan, Ivory Coast) is a French based contemporary painter. Born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast to an Ivorian Father and a French mother, he moved to Bordeaux, France in 1991 for art training. In 1997, he moved back to West Africa, settling in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to learn traditional bronze techniques. After three years, he moved back to France, settling in Paris.
Beyond the obvious cultural syncretism, Dagnogo’s paintings offer several levels of interpretation: a hybrid of aesthetics, mediation painting, and a reconciliation between the human and the sacred. His works, a tribute to the banality of the everyday, question identity, the relative and differences. They include the Sacred as an inner necessity to question human tragedy and our relationship to the world. Memory, consciousness, recollection – the obscure images challenge each other, collide or sometimes isolate themselves.
As with a superimposition, Dagnogo tries to invent and re-enchant a contemporary mythology that emphasizes domestic paradoxes and the contradictions of a world both more civilized and more violent, more respectful and less tolerant, which makes him react with brushstrokes.
Dagnogo has exhibited extensively worldwide. His most recent international exhibitions include solo presentation at Gallery OH in Dakar (2020), and group presentations at H-Gallery, Paris (2020); Galerie Véronique, Paris (2020); and the Abu Dhabi Art Fair (2020). Additionally, he participated in the the 11th and 12th Dak’Art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014 / 2016); the first Biennale of Kampala, Uganda (2014); and the 5th Maiden Tower International Festival, Baku, Azerbaidjan (2014). He has also participated in numerous artist residency programs, including the Art Omi in New York (2014). Some of his works are included in public and private collections, such as the Lisser Art Museum in Sassenheim, Netherlands.