Marcel Kpoho (Benin)
Marcel KPOHO, born in Porto-Novo, the capital of Benin (West Africa) in 1988.
Although he has drawn with great ease since his earliest childhood, he abandoned art to undertake classical studies. After obtaining his baccalaureate in 2010, he enrolled at the National University of Benin (Abomey-Calavi) where he obtained his bachelor’s degree in statistics.
During this period, passionate about fashion, he enrolled in the Union Culturelle et Artistique des Étudiants (UCAE), in the modeling and visual arts section. He does advertisements for ready-to-wear promoters and stylists, as well as designs for new designer designs, but studies prevent him from fully concentrating on his artistic career.
After graduating in 2014, he created his own modelling group with some friends, organized many events and gave maths lessons. But this path is not his, he does not feel out of place and ends up quitting to continue his training at university. Drawing is still part of his life, but he is convinced that without training he cannot become a visual artist.
The click was made with research on the internet and with the meeting of certain elders in the field. This is how he integrated his artistic career in November 2017. Painting allows him to reveal his true potential, to develop and express himself. Since then, he has been working unceasingly, producing paintings (abstracts, landscapes or portraits), sculptures and installations.
Encouragement and training in personal development, volunteering and entrepreneurship motivated him to choose between his university degrees and his artistic career. He understood that painting was his life, a desire to create that had always been in him. Painting or creating is for him a means of escape, expression and sharing. He likes his works to be disturbing, whether seen, admired, or criticized.
Sometimes lonely, he created his own concept. His trademark is to draw triangles. These represent for him the trinity, that is to say the body, the soul and the spirit. This is what he calls this concept trilogical realism.
In addition, concerned about environmental and social issues, he embarks on the recycling of tires which he skilfully cuts and sizes to make masks. For him, every tire cut helps reduce the rate of malaria in Africa and allows you to have a clean city without its tires. He is seduced by its texture, its morphology and its usefulness to recycle it. He studies his reaction to water, to earth, how to cut it and shape it. This environmentalist reuses the tire for a unique, new work of art revealing ecological concerns and aware of environmental issues.
From trilogical realism to tire recycling, its mission, its art… Together let’s save the planet.
Artistic approach
His vitality and curious mind led him to research the human being and his origin, which represents the trinity, that is, body, soul and spirit. Thus arises the triangle that he uses to create drawings or shapes in his paintings. In addition, for him, life and everything that man does on earth is based on the triangle because for the accomplishment of something, the human being refers to inspiration (God), action and the result hence the triangle used in his works. So he called his concept trilogical realism. Indeed, he paints with specific brushes made by himself and adapted to his technique. Finally, given the disasters facing humanity by consumption of solid waste, he engages in the recycling of tires in particular to make masks. In his works, he decants the aspect or the hidden mystery of the human being through the black color (mystery) of the tire to talk about the facts of society, its culture and its history over time.
1. Origin of life (2021)
132 x 108 cm
acrylic on canvas
2. Third eye (2020)
82 x 62 cm
acrylic on canvas
3. Tchango (2020)
75 x 42 x 25 cm
wall mask, tire assebly
