Long based in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, the French-born artist Vincent Michéa exhibits a sustained engagement with the colours and cultures of the African continent. N°82, a painting in acrylic from a series derived from African album covers, is no exception. Based on the sleeve of Ba Gerants Ya Mabala, a 1994 record by the Congolese rumba star M’bilia Bel, it is a celebratory work of appropriation, taking an ephemeral image from popular culture and bestowing upon it the status of fine art. From 1987 to 1991, Michéa worked as assistant to the legendary graphic designer Roman Cieslewicz, and N°82 shows the hallmarks of this discipline. The original glossy photographic cover is transformed: the background is saturated with a soft pink reminiscent of that used by David Hockney, while Bel’s features are rendered in the Ben-Day dots favoured by mid-century comic books and the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein; Michéa scatters the singer’s initials in bold jade green, and adds his own ‘82’ tag beneath. N°82 was exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery’s ‘Pangaea: New Art from Africa and Latin America’in 2014, and Michéa’s work is presently on display in the group show ‘Making Africa’,which has toured to prestigious museums including the Vitra Design Museum, the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Kunsthal Rotterdam. His work is held in the permanent collection of France’s Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (FNAC).
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