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| Image via newmuseum.org. |
October 29, 2014 – February 1, 2015
Also on view:
A look at Chris Ofili’s engagement with dance
October 22, 2014 – February 1, 2015
235 Bowery
New York,
NY
From
newmuseum.org:
The New
Museum presents the first major solo museum exhibition in the United States of
the work of artist Chris Ofili. The exhibition is curated by Massimiliano
Gioni, Artistic Director, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Kraus Family Curator, and
Margot Norton, Assistant Curator. Occupying the Museum’s three main galleries,
“Chris Ofili: Night and Day” will span the artist’s influential career,
encompassing his paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Over the past two
decades, Ofili has become identified with vibrant, meticulously executed,
elaborate artworks that meld figuration, abstraction, and decoration. In his
extremely diverse oeuvre, Ofili has taken imagery and inspiration from such
disparate, history-spanning sources as the Bible, hip-hop music, Zimbabwean
cave paintings, Blaxploitation films, and William Blake’s poems. As the title
of the exhibition suggests, Ofili’s practice has undergone constant changes,
moving from boldly expressive to deeply introspective across an experimental
and prodigious body of work. The exhibition will feature over thirty of Ofili’s
major paintings, a vast quantity of drawings, and a selection of sculptures
from over the course of his twenty-year career.
Ofili’s
early paintings from the ’90s were created using his signature layering of
materials, including paint, resin, glitter, and elephant dung, and a diverse
combination of iconography. The exhibition will bring together more than twelve
of his canvases from this period, which combine spectacularly rendered
psychedelic surfaces with provocative imagery from a staggering array of
cultural sources, from religious icons to Blaxploitation films. From this early
period, Ofili established an approach to painting that is both seductive and
rigorously historical. After moving to Trinidad from London in 2005, Ofili’s
work took a new direction and prompted “The Blue Rider” series, which takes its
name from the early twentieth-century artist group that sought spirituality by
connecting visual art with music. Since then, Ofili has gone on to create a
number of large blue paintings. For this exhibition, nine of these works will
be brought together for the first time in an architectural environment designed
by the artist. Composed in dark hues of blue, this series of paintings evokes
the blue light of twilight and the soulfulness of blues music. Although rooted
in the landscape and culture of Trinidad, Ofili’s blue paintings extend beyond
to offer a contemplative approach to history, identity, and ways of seeing.
His most
recent canvases have been animated by exotic characters, outlandish landscapes,
and folkloric myths that resonate with references to the paintings of Henri
Matisse and Paul Gauguin. This exhibition will also include a selection of
paintings from Ofili’s “Metamorphoses” series. These brightly colored canvases
were inspired by the poem of the same name by Ovid and illustrate the ancient
Roman author’s stories of gods and humans, including the tale of the goddess
Diana and the hunter Actaeon. They were initially created at the invitation of
the National Gallery of London in response to their own series of paintings of
Diana and Actaeon by Titian from the mid-sixteenth century. Ofili’s paintings
offer a unique interpretation of both the original text and its painted
interpretations, opening up the ancient myths to new, contemporary readings.
These works will be displayed in a dreamlike, painted environment inspired by
British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 film Black Narcissus.
Ofili’s
hybrid juxtapositions of high and low, and of the sacred and the profane,
simultaneously celebrate and call into question the power of images and their
ability to address fundamental questions of representation. Through a series of
unexpected connections between his most important bodies of work, Ofili’s
exhibition at the New Museum will reflect the vast breadth of his practice.
“Chris
Ofili: Night and Day” will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue
featuring contributions from the exhibition’s curator, Massimiliano Gioni, as
well as art historian Robert Storr, lawyer and journalist Matthew Ryder,
National Gallery of London curator Minna Moore Ede, and fellow artists Glenn
Ligon and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.
Chris
Ofili was born in Manchester, England, in 1968, and currently lives and works
in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He received his BFA from the Chelsea School of Art
in 1991 and his MFA from the Royal College of Art in 1993. Solo exhibitions of
his work have been presented internationally, including recent shows at the Arts
Club of Chicago (2010); Tate Britain, London (2010 and 2005);
kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2006); and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York
(2005). He represented Britain in the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and won the
Turner Prize in 1998. His works are held in the permanent collections of a
number of museums, including the British Museum, London; the Carnegie Museum of
Art, Pittsburgh; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of
Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and
the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
