Yao Metsoko

Born in 1965 in Togo, where he lived until the age of 19, this Franco-Togolese artist (painter and sculptor) lives and works in France.

In his prime youth, his mother encouraged him to draw images representing
African religious iconography tinged with syncretism. He reinforces this natural gift for drawing through an artistic training in London and Paris.

In his paintings and sculptures, he creates shapes, volumes and colours using plaster reinforced with wire, materials of different densities, mixed techniques, from acrylic to the unity and harmony of the heteroclite, until becoming this alchemist who distills the essence of the questions anchored in the black soil of the continent of its origins: Africa.

The work (painting, sculpture) of this artist is characterized by his protean and aesthetic approach to women, the mysteries of life, ancestral myths, human nature, which gives his works a universal dimension. It thus leads us to question ourselves, in order to allow a reconciliation with the universe in general, and its artistic universe in particular.
particulier.

Generally speaking, this artist nourishes himself with the symbols of the traditional culture of his childhood, making a wise mixture between tradition and modernity since he himself recognizes the necessary opening on new paths.
His commitment to everyday life is reflected in his interest in social and political problems.

Because of his African origins, where religion has a primary place, sometimes tinged with syncretism, one understands why the symbol and the spiritual are inscribed in the artistic work of Yao Metsoko. In summary, Yao Metsoko is guided by the quest for unity between the visible, the invisible, the past, the present and the interiority which remain essential components of his existential and philosophical research, of course artistic.