Hadengue Laina

"I call this series of paintings 'My unusual portraits'. Each painting is worked with oil glazes and for each of them, it takes 4 months of execution.Unusual because they plunge us in an improbable and enigmatic décor between surrealism and hyperrealism in which space and time are not defined.
Time flows like sand in an hourglass, passing vainly and causing conflicts with intimate things through events such as illness, death, the loss of a loved one, territorial or religious wars, planetary issues, climate change and so on.
 
The themes addressed are:
The virtual time, the actual time and the time of the cosmos.
 
The timelessness of what is felt by the spirit, whether this be dark, joyful or contemplative. The present moment and what we make of it. A question about our choices that govern our lives.
In some of the works, the depth of the field, perspective in hyperrealism and vanishing points give an idea of headlong movement, measure, repetition and depth—the chequerboard patterns in Terre promise and in L’air du temps. Finiteness and optical illusion. An evocation of passing time.
Being there, existing for an allotted time, as if suspended in a given unit of space-time and floating on water: 'Après moi le déluge'. Man re...

Laina Hadengue is showing several paintings from her recent series, Mes portraits insolites, at the Venice Biennial. Each work is a fascinating freeze-frame that crystallises the intact beauty of a lesson in painting in the digital era. Our human condition of spectator distracted by a growing multitude of images is suspended after a meditative detour in our world without qualities, fortunately punctuated by indomitable humour!

In fact, Laina Hadengue's paintings—with their saturnine touch—may be unusual and peopled by forlorn beings experiencing grief or by this new form of humanity that has fallen into an interior digitised exile. In this respect, Après moi le déluge is a canvas that is emblematic of the artist's pictorial universe. Three figures, which should be seeking 'height', are walking in single file and concentrating on their mobile phones, following a sheep with its head covered by a bucket! Blind to the disturbing signs of a rising water level, forming a perfect incarnation of 'generation Y' that spends its time on cell phones in a state of perpetual urgency, ' Open 24/7' but deaf to the world around it.

The telescoping of derisory times of foreclosed intimacy and worrying historical events (like the threat of glob...

EXHIBITION
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2019: Conférence  "La femme artiste, une révolution".
2018: Art Up
Biennale de Venise 2017
"Personal Structure"
Espace Temps Existence
Artemisia Gallery et Azart Gallery
19 au 29 Septembre 20, New York
2017 : Galerie Art Compulsion  
2016 : Mac Paris
2016 : ARTEMISIA GALLERY NY, Art Southampton, Etats Unis.
2016: ARTEMISIA GALLERY NY, Spring Show et Azart gallery, New York.
2016 : H2M – Hôtel Marron de Meillonnas Espace d'art Contemporain, Lyon.
2015 : MAC PARIS
ART HAMPTONS  ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC, Southampton.
2015 : ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC , New York.
ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC , New York
MAC PARIS du 26 au 29 Novembre 2015
2015: "Feminity"  ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC, New York.
2014: Du 24 au 30 Novembre "festival "Courts devant" Paris.
2014: Du 27 au 30 Novembre Mac Paris
2014: Select Art Fair Chelsea 27   8/11 mai 2014, New York.
2014: ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC, New York
2013:ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC, New York.
2013: Biennale d'Issy, Paris 
2013: Galerie Lulu Mirette
2011: Exhibition collective, Arcos Italy
2009: AAF London, Londres.
2009: Projection video Space Dialogos, Paris
2009: Espace Dialogos, Cachan
ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC
AAF, London
2007: Seoul Art Center Manif, Korea.
ARTEMISIA GALLERY NYC...