The internationally recognized artist Sess Essoh (1988, born in Toupah, Côte d’Ivoire) graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Abidjan in 2012 with a Master's Degree in Art (Master II, option Mural Art). Sess Essoh is working in the South of France as a guest lecturer in the framework of an international exchange program at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Marseille.
He was awarded the second prize of the International Association of Art Critics of Ivory Coast in 2017. In 2022, his works quickly sold out at the 1:54 in Paris. You can find his works in the collection of the French bank Société Générale, more recently in the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, as well as in numerous private collections.
An avid reader since childhood, literature, philosophy and the dialectic of language play a major role in the life and work of Sess Essoh. In his increasingly abstract painting, he links imagination, history and sociology to his art to focus his ideas on the places and means of achieving an ideal and liberation that is both tangible and longed for.
His current practice is invested in the exploration of his socio-political environment and a society that he feels is losing its bearings and values, as he experiences it through his readings, discussions with friends and debates on social networks. The artist questions our collective memory, using a process of collages and graphemes that he puts either on unexpected supports (cardboard, archive pages, etc. ...), or on canvas. These graphemes draw and suggest figurines, masks, statuettes and challenge us to go beyond the pretenses in an effort to explore new horizons, another chapter of history.
A provocative pedagogy, the sequencing of his production in episodes aims to dramatize an imaginary but symbolic society of our world, such as a parody of the Human Comedy. His characters are the evocation of caricatured figures, thus the "Plaster Men" represent ordinary people exposed to corruption and mediocrity, while the "Cardinals" are the masters of time, immortals and arbiters of this great comedy.