The Walther Collection

French, b. 1978; lives and works in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and La Rochelle, France

François-Xavier Gbré was born in Lille, France. After studying photography at the École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques in Montpellier, he worked in fashion and design photography in Milan.

A complex constellation of minute photographs maps out the specific lines of inquiry that guide Gbré’s practice. Organized according to narrative, form, and color, these interlocking grids are in fact fine-tuned arrangements of mockups the artist once used in order to understand his own conceptual process. This constellation includes images from Tracks (2009–ongoing) alongside other series in Gbré’s oeuvre. These provide cartographies not of the physical regions he traverses, but of the memories, images, and localized structures through which he wades. From colonial remnants to landscapes redefined by the present, Gbré continually explores territories and revisits histories.