Des géométries variables presents an unexpected encounter between two painters, Léon Wuidar and Brooklin A. Soumahoro, who at first glance seem to have little in common. They differ in artistic lineage, generation, and geography. Wuidar was born in 1938 in Liège, where he still lives, and since the late 1960s has produced singular paintings, works that inherit ge ometric abstraction yet never fully renounce figuration or references to the world around us. Soumahoro, on the other hand, was born in 1990 in Paris and has lived for about a decade in Los Angeles, where he began his self-taught painting practice. His work is rooted in a highly precise form of abstraction, composed of mathematically repeated triangles within a strict, pre-defined colored grid.

While these two painters emerge from vastly different worlds, they share more common ground than one might initially think. Even before paint touches canvas, both artists engage in rigorous, methodical processes. Wuidar draws dozens of miniature geometric compositions in a sketchbook, each constrained within a small frame and filled with color. Out of hundreds of such studies, one will be chosen to be realized on a larger scale. Soumahoro, for his part, develops his compositions through a rationalized, near-ritualistic method: a quasi-algorithmic calculation determines the repetition of motifs, each color is assigned a number, each brush— never more than 5 millimeters wide—is chosen specifically for the painting at hand, and a piece of music is selected to accompany the entire creative process.

Beyond a shared vocabulary of abstract forms and a vivid chromatic palette, both artists’ paintings draw on extra-pictorial references. Wuidar’s geometric shapes recall his childhood memories—particularly the gestures of cutting performed by his father, a tailor in Liège. Mean while, the colorful repetitions in Soumahoro’s work evoke the vibrant textiles of Ivorian cul ture, from which the artist descends. However, while Soumahoro’s technique leaves traces of the hand—his paintings embrace their materiality—Wuidar’s surfaces display flawlessly smooth fields of color.

Yet both artists’ abstractions possess a shared uniqueness: a fascination with unstable ge ometries. The pictorial worlds of Wuidar and Soumahoro are animated by a common tension, between meaningful abstraction and pure abstraction. It is from this very tension that their paintings draw their power. In this unique dialogue, Brooklin A. Soumahoro offers a compel ling counterpoint and a distinctly contemporary resonance to the parallel history of abstrac tion so singularly embodied in Léon Wuidar’s work.

(Text by Marjolaine Lév)