Obou Gbais (b. 1992) is an Ivorian painter who graduated in 2019 from an art school in Abidjan, guided by Pascal Conan. His work has been shown in Zurich, Abidjan and, in 2022, in “Contemporary African Art: The Dreams and Realities of Identity” at the Kasiulis Museum in Vilnius. Having experienced war in 2002, he explores the fates of war victims, painting people in African slums whose violence and pain his compositions only partly conceal.
Under the guidance of the artist Pascal Conan, in 2019 Obou Gbaisas graduated from an art school in Abidjan. In 2017, his works were exhibited at the TART Gallery in Zurich, later at Rotonde des Arts and Art-Time galleries in Abidjan. In May-October 2022, O. Gbaisas' works were exhibited at the Kasiulis Museum (in Vilnius) as part of the exhibition "Contemporary African Art: The Dreams and Realities of Identity"; the artist visited Vilnius during the opening of the exhibition. Since 2020, the artist has been participating in various art projects in France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. In 2002, in Africa, O. Gbaisas experienced the brutality of war, which still influences his exploration of the fates of war victims in his artwork. The main motif of his paintings is the human condition; depicting people living in African slums in the 21st century. The artist's compositions partially conceal the dark side of the characters, the disorder of the slums, violence, assaults, and pain, but observant viewers can discern it in O. Gbais's works.
