TOTH GALLERY Figurative Photography

Meschac Gaba (Benin, 1961- ) Artist with American Inspiration: 4 World Financial Center, 2004, Meschac Gaba, pigmented inkjet print, Hand signed, dated and inscribed '15 des 30 Artiste d'inspiration Americaine' verso. Dimensions: approximately 17 1/2 x 42 1/2 in. (sheet), 19 x 44 in. (frame) Meshac Gaba employs an intervention on an American dollar bill in Artist with American Inspiration: 4 World Financial Center, swapping out our stately eagle for his smiling face portrait. One of Gaba’s sculptures appears on the left as well. Meschac Gaba (born 1961) is a Beninese conceptual artist based in Rotterdam and Cotonou. His installations of everyday objects whimsically juxtapose African and Western cultural identities and commerce. He is best known for The Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002, an autobiographical 12-room installation acquired and displayed by the Tate Modern in 2013. He has also exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem and at the 2003 Venice Biennale. Meshac Gaba was born in Cotonou, Benin, in 1961. He had drifted from his training as a painter until a bag of decommissioned money cut into confetti led him to make paintings with the material. 1981-1985 He was a student at the artist studio of Zossou Gratien, Cotonou, Benin. Gaba became known for his installations of everyday objects that whimsically juxtapose African and Western cultural identities and commerce. He held a residency at the Amsterdam Rijksakademie in 1996 for two years. In the absence of opportunities to display his work in the city, he set out over the next five years to make his own museum. This piece became his seminal The Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002, which consists of 12 rooms (some based on museum function and others personal) filled with objects made by Gaba. Throughout the exhibition ran a vein of confessional narrative about the artist's art travails between Africa and Europe The wedding room, which he made while in love, holds mementos as museum artifacts from Gaba's wedding to the Dutch curator Alexandra van Dongen in 2000 at the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum. The Library room holds art...

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