NEW YORK: Titus Kaphar

NOTE: THIS EXHIBIT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR VIEWING FEBRUARY 28, 2013 - APRIL 6, 2013. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT: WWW.THEVESPERPROJECT.COM

THE VESPER PROJECT

November 8 - December 1, 2012

Opening reception: November 1, 6-8pm

FRIEDMAN BENDA

515 West 26th Street

New York, NY

Friedman Benda is pleased to announce Titus Kaphar’s 'The Vesper Project'. The exhibition is a massive sculptural statement - an encompassing installation, in which Kaphar’s own work is seamlessly woven into the walls of a 19th-century American house.

The culmination of an intense five-year engagement with the lost storylines of the Vesper family, the project was “birthed in a state of extended disbelief,” according to Kaphar. As the artist’s muses, the members of the Vesper family and their histories are intertwined with Kaphar’s autobiographical details, and layered with wide-based cultural triggers of identity and truth in the context of historical accounting.

In 'The Vesper Project', period architecture, gilt-frames, a vintage type-writer, a neglected wardrobe, old photographs act as seemingly recognizable elements but by employing every tool of his trade, Kaphar insinuates doubt and transports the viewer into a disrupted mental state. As the house fractures, so does the viewer’s experience. In so doing, Kaphar compresses times, conflates the continuum of history and postulates new powerful realities.

With many of Kaphar's interventions present in the installation including slashing, silhouetting, and whitewashing, this singular work is a complex map of overlapping timetables and collective genealogies. By obliterating the distance between the viewer and the work, 'The Vesper Project' is comprehensive, experiential, and it is the artist’s most ambitious expression to date.

Titus Kaphar graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University. In 2006, he served as the Artist in Residence at The Studio Museum, Harlem. In 2009, he received the inaugural Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Prize from the Seattle Museum of Art for his exhibition History in the Making. His work has been displayed recently in Berlin, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv and is currently on view at the Savannah College of Design. This will be his second exhibition at Friedman Benda, after 2011’s 'Classical Disruption'.

For more information, please contact:
Jennifer Olshin, Director
jennifer@friedmanbenda.com
(212) 239-8700

Alice Higgins, Associate Director
alice@friedmanbenda.com
(212) 239-8700