Gallery ILÉ Proudly Represents | OSWALD MATRO

Gallery ILÉ is proud to announce its representation of fast emerging,

Benin based mixed media artist

Oswald Matro.

Oswald Matro was born in 2002 in the city of Abomey Goho, located in the southern part of Benin.

In 2016, Matro moves to the capital, Cotonou, determined to perfect his creative calling. Soon, his uniquely idiosyncratic visual narrative and versatility as a painter and sculptor caught the attention of one of the most celebrated contemporary African artists today, Dominique Zinkpe, aka The Baobab.

In 2017, under the nurturing mentorship of this true African giant, Matro embarks on a 7 years Masterclass in residence, investigating art's fundamental building blocks, such as form, abstraction, scale, composition and storytelling.

In April 2025, concluding this intensely immersive period, Oswald Matro graduated with honours, receiving a diploma that grant him his official status as a visual artist.

Having taken part in various exhibitions, including: Les Gardiens de l'Invisible, Ouidah (2025), N.art.urel, Sacred Forest of Pahou (2024), Emblèmes, Lieu Unik, Abomey (2022) and Boulev'Art, Cotonou (2021), Oswald Metro is currently poised to take part in a series of workshops and art residencies in both West and North Africa.

The collection unveils 7 exceptionally large and mesmerising paintings:

Oddly abstract, while figurative and incredibly expressive, paintings by Oswald Matro are gateways to uncharted plains of creative expression, upon which the artist's visions materialise through myriads of effulgences, so vivid, textured and captivating, they almost instantly provoke an intoxicating sensory overload inside the viewer's mind.

Cross pollinating both Christian and Animist spiritual ideologies, Matro's idiosyncratic narrative brings into play varying viewpoints pertaining to human interrelationships, familial conflicts and societal interplays.

For Oswald Matro, Art is a means to rise above the existential conundrums of our lives, by opening new portals of dialogues between the past and the future, between the realms of the seen and that of the unseen, toiling at the intersection of dream and reality.