Curated by Casper Klaasse

 

Just over thirty-five years old, with a distinguished career already behind him, it's true that his birth into a family of traditional dyers predisposed him to art.

At a very young age, growing up in the Medina district of Dakar, he collected scraps of canvas and dye materials to create his own universe and develop his artistic flair.

He wasn't passionate about his studies and abandoned them as soon as possible; he worked in a wide variety of professions, including carpentry, tailoring, and even a middle school supervisor, but the attraction to an artistic career remained strongest.

 

In 2015, he took the plunge and enrolled in SAADIO's 'Car Rapide' workshop, where he was finally able to learn the techniques that would allow him to unleash his creativity. In 2018, he opened his own studio in the Mamelles district of Dakar, where he has since pursued a career dedicated to painting. Exhibitions follow one another, notably in Senegal, including DWG, Off de la Biennale, and Partcours. But he also transcends borders and exhibits in neighboring countries, while other perspectives beyond the oceans are being developed.

Tampidaro paints the world around him, the city around him, with its excesses and chaos.

 

He doesn't hesitate to borrow from Japanese manga techniques to offer us a highly contemporary body of work, with vibrant, acid colors, and canvases teeming with details that demonstrate his keen sense of observation and sensitivity. Whether it's photographs, advertisements, or real or imagined landscapes, the artist claims to be modern, avant-garde, surreal, and poetic, and all of this is clearly evident when observing his work. At first glance, it's flashy, violent, almost stifling, but if you take the time to contemplate, you easily penetrate his universe and find all the tenderness of a man who represents his vision of his world and who loves it. And we willingly let ourselves be carried away into this psychedelic universe, whose landing brings us nothing but blessings. We can see fish flying, we can listen to the song of birds in improbable colors, the asphalt of the streets is candy pink, and the flow of the buildings is dizzying!

What moments of happiness and freedom, far from all the conventions and tearful visions of our world as it is.

 

Yet the social burden is there, the poverty and chaos are so perceptible to those who want to go beyond playful appearances. The artist accomplishes this feat of showing us reality through the pleasantly distorting prism of his talent, and this is not the least of his talents.

 

Sylvain Sankalé, Dakar, 2025