Vincent Michéa

Vincent Michéa was born in 1963 in Figeac, France. He lives and works between Paris and Dakar.
After graduating from the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques et d’Architecture Intérieure (ESAG Pennin-ghen) in Paris, Vincent Michéa moved to Dakar in 1986. He then worked as an assistant to the famous graphic designer Roman Cieslewicz until 1991. Strongly encouraged by Cieslewicz, Vincent Michéa took up painting and brought with him a bit of the spirit of this master graphic designer and the decade that shaped him.
Vincent Michéa develops a practice of painting and collage essentially, he is a unique artist, with a hybrid geography and inspirations; a fabricator of images, which he recycles, assembles, subverts and whose power and beauty he reveals to us. With an elective European and African genealogy, guided above all by a principle of pleasure, Vincent Michéa’s work oscillates between a vibrant joy and a gentle melancholy. It reveals an observant artist, nourished by music, fashion, architecture and literature.
An artist well known on the West African scene but too rarely shown in Europe, Vincent Michéa takes us on a journey through time with him. In addition to sharing a personal cultural universe, Vincent Michéa’s approach can be considered in many ways as a true archivist’s work, in the sense of the conservation and safeguarding of elements of the cultural landscape (musical, architectural, visual...), all the more precious as they constitute a heritage that is often in the process of disappearing. Without freezing them in time, the artist manages to perpetuate their aura and their history, and thus offers us to encounter them directly, not only with a historian’s eye but also through our emotional memory.
Vincent Michéa’s work is part of several international collections such as Agnès B, Paris (France), Saatchi Gallery, London (UK) and the Mohamed VI Museum, Rabat (Morocco).

Submitted by Galerie Cécile Fakhoury