The late Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez (1948–2015) was a fabricator of architectural dreams. His sculptural cityscapes of roads, skyscrapers, and buildings in manifold shapes—stepped, curved, zig-zagged, conical, peacock-tailed, wavy—are arresting. Once seen, it’s impossible to forget his style. His self-described “extreme maquettes” push the mind to wonder what sort of independent-minded alien cosmopolites could live among their indiscreet geometries.
The NEH-sponsored “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica” exhibition, which was on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, featured one of Kingelez’s more compact works: Tupiña Resto—which was created while the artist was visiting Bordeaux, France. Constructed out of cardboard, paper, plexiglass, and mylar, the sculpture also incorporates straws that stand sentry at the base of one of the buildings like lampposts and crown the top of another like a mop. The work’s verticality coaxes the eye up and down, but the diversity of the buildings’ angles, the dissimilarity of their rooftops, and the varied distribution of surfaces frustrate the sweeping, totalizing glance.
Kingelez’s work is palpably handmade. Just look at the strip of road that winds around the base of the sculpture’s central section and droops like a roller-coaster dip. The title of the piece appears in various places throughout the sculpture, spelled out and in abbreviated form. The word “tupina” is a Basquian term for a cauldron, and “resto” is a French contraction of “restaurant.” If we dare to imagine this complex of buildings as a restaurant, then what we have is a setting for chance meetings amid a seemingly endless range of culinary variety.