Francis Offman

Francis Offman works with installation and sculpture, yet his primary medium is painting. Working with various base surfaces such as jute, linen or canvas, Offman will gradually layer monochromatic pigments onto these materials and collage fragments of torn paper, ink, cotton or plaster. The paintings are not stretched or supported by wooden frames, but pinned to the wall, affording them a sense of vulnerability. Meditative and sensorial, each component of each work is meticulously considered by Offman. Perhaps the most central ingredient within Offman’s oeuvre is coffee. The artist began working with this material in 2014, using these grains as tangible vessels to reflect the cultural, political and economic relationship between Europe and Africa. Offman was born in Rwanda, and now lives in Italy after his family fled Rwanda during the civil war. Coffee imported from his native country acted as a consumable thread growing up, and the incorporation of these granules into his paintings sensitively tackles the trauma of European rule in Africa on both a personal and wider scale. Offman cites David Hammons as a key influence upon the way he conceptualizes projects, specifically the way in which individual substances can serve as shorthand for a myriad of social and political entanglements. Operating purely in an abstract field, the conceptual make up of Offman’s oeuvre speaks volumes. ...

Deborah Schamoni is a contemporary art gallery based in Munich, Germany. Situated in a 1970s villa, the gallery is able to offer its artists a spacious white cube, flooded with daylight and opening up to a greened outdoor area, as well as an independent smaller room. Since its founding in 2013, the gallery has focused on showing and supporting emerging international artists and it presents an exceptional program that unites international positions with a subversive and self-reflexive approach to art making considering the complexity of human coexistence. The gallery often stages the first shows of upcoming international artists in Germany. The program is developing a distinct profile with artists like Maryam Hoseini, Yong Xiang Li, and Flaka Haliti, who investigate the sociopolitical conditions of queer identity and gender, and share a diasporic experience in their works. Beyond its international focus, the gallery has been playing an important part in establishing Munich as a prominent destination for contemporary art and its discourses. ...