Chéri Samba, Gallery ZAK, Fürth, Bavaria, 27.10.2000 – 31.03.2001

[Chéri Samba]

Nürnberger Zeitung, 27.12.2000, -EDE-

A tour round four art galleries in Nuremberg, Fürth and Bamberg

Pop-Art from America to Africa

Anything but tame are the colourful works by Chéri Samba (born in 1956). The Zairian painter captures unadorned and with irony everyday life of the big city Kinshasa and this includes disease, prostitution and corruption. Dr. Bernd Kleine-Gunk, doctor, art collector and owner of the ZAK Gallery, which specialises in contemporary African art, summarises Samba’s work under the term "African Pop Art", because he uses elements of commercial advertising and comic books. In their naive, simplistic narrative style they also remind us of Frida Kahlo's popular images in which she takes the side of ordinary people and thematises unvarnished and with irony the daily life. Only, in contrast, Samba is incredibly bold in his observations - and it gives him obviously pleasure to add salacious scenes. The cycle of traditional healing methods such as enemas or the offering of mother milk for conjunctivitis is more reminiscent of the lustful positional-canon of the Kama Sutra than the cure of ailments.

Equally humorous and like a stage setting stylised is the "fight against the mosquitoes". Protagonists: a couple in their bed room. He is fighting the enemies with a slingshot from the left side, she with bow and arrow from the right side. The written texts in the balloons are telling us about the battle cries of the modern urban couple. Chéri Samba represents a piece of self-confident Africa beyond the third world and masks-stereotypes that exist in the minds of Europeans. Since 1989, the artist enjoys international recognition that expresses itself not least in the price.