King Houdekpinkou “Time on Earth”

Vallois America

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Gallery Vallois America presents an exhibition “Time on Earth” by Franco-Beninese ceramist King Houndekpinkou.

In 2017, Gallery Vallois France places the entirety of its exhibition programming under the sign of Benin. Through artistic and cultural exchanges it has initiated since 2012 in Cotonou (capital of Benin), Gallery Vallois is Patron of the Arts and Culture Center in Lobozounkpa, a multidisciplinary space dedicated to contemporary creation in all its forms, directed by Dominique Zinkpè.

On the same site, since 2015, the Petit Musée de la Récade is home to a permanent collection of “recades” or royal scepters and the site for diverse contemporary art exhibitions. In this context, our New York space will present the work of King Houndekpinkou in New York with an exhibition comprising twenty works in ceramic.

Born in 1987 in the outskirts of Paris, King created a refined and spiritual body of work inspired by both Japan and his African roots. He studied at length the traditions of the non-enameled ceramics of Bizen (a region of Okayama), where King continues to visit every year.

On a technical level, King’s creative process implements an intimate and direct relationship with the material that he scratches, tears and repairs, thus creating simultaneously graceful and raw artworks. It is on the occasion of a first trip to Japan in 2012, that he discovers ceramics. He then became aware of the universality of clay, which encouraged him to return to his roots and his ancestors of Benin through works made from the most elemental of materials from the earth.

The exhibition ‘Time on Earth’ sacralizes precisely the earth, which constitutes a source of memory rich with knowledge and the vestiges left by man. Besides, the first ceramists were shamans who were able to read the oracles in the clay.