Ngoye (1980, born in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire) contemporary artist and art porfessor, graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 2006. His works are already in renowned private and public collections around the world in (Germany, Italy and France). He also won the 47th Art Prize of the Société de Distribution d’eau en Côte d’Ivoire (SODECI).
Human dynamics and inner states of mind usually remain hidden. True psychosocial phenomena differ from outward appearances. Emotions are isolated from the outside world, true identity is hidden. This is a theme that underlies all of Ngoye's work and is reflected in the symbol of the mask, which is linked to the tradition of his homeland on a metaphorical level.
In a neo-expressionist style, Ngoye translates these themes into form and colour on canvas. His oeuvre evolved towards greater abstraction and deconstruction of the image. The original masks are gradually blurred with each other and with the background of the painting, and from one work to the next they seem to become a single entity. At first they were presented in a geometric way, with a deformation, rearrangement and distortion of the forms already evident, which in later works was reinforced by the now expressive ductus of the brush. The geometry of the early works gradually dissolved, His new series of works presents an even greater loss of the true identity of society in the face of greater abstraction. A form of expression also found in the work of abstract expressionist Cy Twombly. Twombly's paintings feature chaotic tangles of paint that, unlike Ngoye's, do not cover the entire surface of the canvas, but merely accentuate it. Ngoye takes this technique to the extreme, covering large formats.
His works embody oppressive pain and reveal a distrust of society. The artist asks himself to what extent he is influenced by situations, people and circumstances. „Am I staying who I think I am?" (Ngoye, 2021).
The socially critical content of the paintings is taken to a new level. In his earlier paintings, the artist showed in a figurative way that the true inner state of people is hidden under a mask, with the very motif of the mask. Now he puts a mask on his works himself, blurring their features beyond recognition.