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.