FotoFile | A Vast Introduction to Designer and Artist Kossi Aguessy

PARIS — To our chagrin, we have never profiled the work of Togo-born artist and designer Kossi Aguessy. That changes today! His works are so slick— visual candy we could eat with our eyes for days. We wanted to showcase as much of it as we possibly could.

Our favorites of the bunch have to be his masks, which are loaded with older cultural significance but gifted with a sheen that makes them appear as though they came from the far future.

That theme continues across many of his works. It’s not often we get to feature a sculpture of a cyborg on Cfile, but there you go! His lamps glow an eerie neon green. His marble chairs look worthy of the term “throne.”

About the designer, according to his biography:

Born April 17, 1977 in Lomé, Togo, Kossi Aguessy studied Industrial and Interior design in the United Kingdom, at the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London. He lives and works in the United Kingdom, the United States and France.

Independent since 2004, he had collaborated with the StarkNetwork in Paris before establishing his self-named studio in Paris, France, in 2008, while assuming in the other hand the Art Direction function for the London based Pan-African television channel Vox.

He had therefore designed the visual and broadcasting identity of the media.

In 2008, His Useless Tool, a chair manufactured using military aircraft technics hits international spotlights during the Please Do Not Sit exhibition in Paris, France.

In 2009, His self produced Sparkling Joke coffee table, designed using recycled PET bottles and caps drove the Coca Cola Company ‘s attention to his work. He Begun a collaboration leading to the creation of the Coca Cola Sustainable Design Awardstrophy and a set of recycled materials made furnitures with the US beverages Company.

In 2010 Kossi Aguessy was featured with several of his works including his emblematic Useless Chair, the Soissons porcelain floor lamp, and the 3some vase by the Museum of Arts and Design In New York City in the Global Africa Project exhibition co-curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, MAD’s Charles Bronfman International Curator, and Leslie King-Hammond. His work is part of the MAD Museum permanent collection since 2011.

Kossi Aguessy’s researches in matter of new manufacturing technologies and sustainable energy sources, had lead him to the establishment of the first Fab Lab ( FabricationLaboratory) organized by the French Industrial Prospective and The Paris Based Centre Pompidou , in Porto Novo, Benin, in February 2012.

The same year, he designed and manufactured Koss the Official 2012 Present for the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, and conceived The Guardian, the monument celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Togolese independence, while the Beaubourg Museum’s Multiversités Créatives exhibition showcased the designer’s first Benin Designed pieces. In 2013 The KossiAguessy Studio is moved From Paris France To London .

Kossi Aguessy’s works were permanently included into the Beaubourg museum collection in 2013. He became as such the very first African descent designer having a nominative section in the French contemporary arts and design Museum. Futuristic, multi-cultural and polymorphic, kossi aguessy’s signature results from practical, technological, sociological and formal researches. The designer and artist is considered as a “Design Researcher” among those who “engineer the future” and which are named Multiverses.

Text (edited) courtesy of the artist.

Do you love or loathe these works of contemporary ceramics and contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.