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Regard Lointain Nobel Koty
From March 22nd to May 25th, 2025, Atlantic presents an exhibition by Beninese painter Nobel Koty, who has been exploring the infinite potential of the self-portrait for almost a decade. Entitled “Regard Lointain”, the exhibition invites visitors to discover five new paintings by the artist, four small formats and one large canvas, as well as “Pray”, a piece from the Incertitudes series presented at the 9th edition of the AKAA (Also Known As Africa) fair in Paris in October 2024.
Nobel Koty continues to be his own subject and the object of his pictorial explorations. On his largest canvas, the “character”, seated on a stool, is immersed, absorbed or lost in his own thoughts. He stands in front of us, almost naked, but is he with us? And this foot, this back, this face in profile, what do these fragments say about this man?
These paintings reveal a more intimate study of the body - his own, of course - based on photos from which he extracts some details. But if Nobel Koty is always seeking for the right expression, emotions and humanity, he reveals a new, more physical, almost carnal relationship with painting. The painting is a medium he never stops exploring and for which he admits to developing an obsession: now this self-taught artist wants to shape it, to add layers to form volumes, reliefs, to bring out light and reflections.
This modelling depicts folds, wrinkles, imperfections, the elasticity of skin, the intensity of a look, but at the same time creates abstraction. Would this back be a back without the thin white stripe that outlines it?
“Over time, following a process of experimentation, I realize that paint acts as a paste, several layers of it. This material has no pretensions, yet it is highly complex, and everything depends on the intention you put into it”, explains Koty.
What’s the intention here? Where does this need to accumulate acrylics come from? Nobel Koty doesn’t have an answer, since he’s constantly searching, even if he evokes “a form of satisfaction, a release from frustrations and anxieties”.
Moreover, in “Regard Lointain”, he doesn’t move away from his own palette: few colors, declensions of brown, red and violet on a neutral background, so that all attention is focused on the body, in full or in fragments.
For him, self-portraiture is an inner quest, a sincere confrontation with oneself: “When I’m going through moments of fear, I can’t run away, because I paint myself as a frightened individual”, he confesses. But his modesty-filled representations are not narcissistic. Everyone can relate to his or her own state of mind, questioning and fragility. Born into a family of intellectuals and high-ranking civil servants, Nobel Koty has come to accept and follow a different trajectory, certainly not the one planned for him.
Nobel Koty, born in 1988 in Benin, won the Ellipse Prize for contemporary art in 2024. That same year, he took part in the group exhibition Révélation, Art du Bénin at the Conciergerie in Paris. Atlantic is his third solo show after AKAA and Borna Soglo Gallery in Cotonou in 2022.
- Delphine Bousquet Hazoumè
Nobel Koty, Pensées 4, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 150 x 150 cm
Nobel Koty, Fragment, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Nobel Koty, Fragment, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Nobel Koty, Fragment, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Nobel Koty, Fragment, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
Nobel Koty, Pray, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 130 x 110 cm
