"When the Hamburg gallery Melbye-Konan dedicated a solo presentation to 31-year-old Yannick Ackah at the Positions fair in Berlin in September, it quickly sold out of all his works. This week, it is showing the artist, who graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Abidjan three years ago, with the exhibition "Spiritual Symphony" in Hamburg. "I see beauty and challenge in African sculpture, a whole history and a great mystery that I try to solve in my work with lines, style and colour," he says. Ackah's multi-layered painting is a journey through continents and times: With his mask motifs, he spans an arc from his African origins to the reception of Africa by Picasso and Parisian modernism, to Jean-Michel Basquiat and the New York graffiti scene of the 1980s."
