The lush oil paintings of London-based Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) embrace many of the conventions of historical European portraiture, but expand on that tradition by engaging fictional subjects who often serve as protagonists of the artist’s short stories as well.
These imagined figures are almost always black, an attribute Yiadom-Boakye sees as both political and autobiographical, given her own West African heritage. Her elegant characters come to life through the artist’s bold brushwork, appearing both cavalier and nonchalant. This catalog accompanying her New Museum exhibition features an interview with the artist by Natalie Bell and Massimiliano Gioni, new reflections on Yiadom-Boakye’s work by artist Chris Ofili, and art historians Elena Fillipovic and Robert Storr.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Under-Song for a Cipher

Arts & Photography

Filipovic, Elena

Ofili, Chris

STORR, Robert

Individual Artists

New Museum/Kunsthalle Basel

Afro Muses presents 181 watercolors created over the last ten years by artist Chris Ofili. A part of his prodigious output of works on paper, this selection of watercolors has never been exhibited before. Organized by the artist and Thelma Golden, chief curator, this exhibition includes images of men and women with a few birds and flowers, arranged as individual works, couples and groups. Some of Ofili’s watercolors have become the starting point for larger paintings; these are created as fully realized works. Ofili describes making these works as both pleasurable and challenging. Deriving from a meditative exercise, this presentation represents the evolution of his particular studio practice. Upon first viewing, the images can easily be perceived as portraits of individuals. These ancient visages are oddly reminiscent of someone, somewhere at some moment in time. However, they are not actual representations, but rather figurative expressions. Like the characters that populate Ofili

Chris Olifi: Afro Muses 1995-2005

Photography & Video

Studio Museum in Harlem

Chris Ofili - The Upper Room

History & Criticism

Victoria Miro Gallery

This new gorgeous and diverse collection documents the exhibition 00 at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York. For this exhibition, over one hundred prominent contemporary artists were asked to submit works on paper that were made this year--in '00'. 00 investigates the act of drawing as a vital necessity that transcends the bounds of age, nationality, scale, content, process, and concept. The richness of the medium is reflected by the diversity of the participating artists, who include: Acconci Studio, Kai Althoff, John Baldessari, Miroslaw Balka, Matthew Barney, John Bock, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Vija Celmins, Francesco Clemente, Michael Craig-Martin, John Currin, Roy Dowell, Marlene Dumas, Carroll Dunham, Rachel Feinstein, Tim Gardner, April Gornik, Arturo Herrera, Gary Hume, Sol LeWitt, Anish Kapoor, Ellsworth Kelly, Yayoi Kusama, Mark Manders, Brice Marden, Chris Ofili, Elizabeth Peyton, Elle Phelan, Lari Pittman, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Gregor Schneider, Richard Serra, Serse, Takashi Murakami, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Rosemarie Trockel, Kara Walker, Lawrence Weiner, and Christopher Wool. The resulting exhibition and its accompanying catalogue--including an illuminating essay by the curator and writer Klaus Kertess--act as a definitive survey of the practice of drawing at the present moment.

00: Drawings 2000 At Barbara Gladstone Gallery

Baldessari, John

Clemente, Francesco

Dunham, Carroll

Dumas, Marlene

Murakami, Takashi

Craig-Martin, Michael

BARNEY, Matthew

Currin, John

Pittman, Lari

Kertess,klaus

Feinstein, Rachel

Bourgeois, Louise

Althoff, Kai

Celmins, Vija

Acconci Studio

Balka, Miroslaw

Brown, Cecily

Dowell, Roy

Gornik, April

Phelan, Ellen

Serse

Bock, John

Gardner, Tim

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Barbara Gladstone Gallery

Disputes over free expression in the arts have always loomed as struggles between creativity and repression, transgression and outrage, candor and hypocrisy. But while high-profile shootouts at art museums and less visible skirmishes at schools, libraries, and theaters persist, overt censorship is no longer the only, or the most dire, threat to free expression. On the one hand, society has become more accepting of provocative imagery, with media conglomerates often leading the way in the depreciation of taboos. On the other hand, artists, while enjoying some unprecedented liberties, are hemmed in by new constraints that often fall beyond the range of First Amendment protection. The current terrain bears little resemblance to the culture wars of a decade ago, much less to what the First Amendment's Framers could have imagined. And since Sept. 11, 2001, the frontlines of the free-expression debate have been shifting once again. Based on a Columbia University conference organized by the National Arts Journalism Program, The New Gatekeepers explores the reconfigured ranks of those who decide what the public gets to see, hear and read, from struggles over intellectual property and copyright, to continuing debates about acceptable and offensive content in the cultural marketplace, to the less visible biases of the arts funding system. This heavily illustrated book also includes a historical overview of censorship and contributions by 40 scholars, artists, experts and journalists from around the United States. Discussed and participating artists include Edouard Manet, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Serra, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Andres Serrano, Carolee Schneemann, Dread Scott, Gran Fury, Joel-Peter Witkin, Kara Walker, Jock Sturges, Chris Ofili, and Tom Sachs.

The New Gatekeepers: Emerging Challenges to Free Expression in the Arts

Menand, Louis

Manet, Édouard

Walker, Kara

Schneemann, Carolee

Mann, Charles

HIRST, Damien

Newman, Roger

SERRA, Richard

Chapman, Jake

Brenson, Michael

Koons, Jeff

Becker, Carol

Sunstein, Cass

RODIN, Auguste

Sachs, Tom

Adler, Amy

Cahill, Timothy

Gurstein, Rochelle

Tepper, Steven

Godfrey, Marian

Chapman, Dinos

Ferguson, Laura

Scott, Dread

Serrano, Andres

National Arts Journalism Program

Chris Ofili 2017: Weaving Magic

Finaldi, Gabriele

The National Gallery / Victoria Miro

In 2017, Chris Ofili photographed chain-link fences throughout the island of Trinidad in order to explore notions of beauty, community, liberation, and constraint. This series of arresting images--"pocket photography," as described by the artist--is the first body of photography ever published by Ofili. Through these entrancing black-and-white photographs, the artist engages with the diverse sources that inspired his critically acclaimed&nbsp;Paradise Lost&nbsp;exhibition at David Zwirner, New York in the fall of 2017. Since moving to Trinidad in 2005, Ofili has continued to engage with the surrounding environment and culture, which has found its way into many of his colorful paintings. In these deceivingly simple black-and-white photographs, he captures a wide cross section of Trinidad as he highlights the encounter between natural and man-made settings, and the different aesthetic possibilities each brings out in the other. In focusing on a ubiquitous and seemingly unremarkable piece of equipment, Ofili is able to comment on our interactions with space and each other, using a near-universal subject as the fence slices the sky, melds into a tree, frames a basketball game, or reveals an opening. In a new essay by the critically acclaimed author of&nbsp;Island People: The Caribbean and the World&nbsp;(2016), Joshua Jelly-Schapiro charts the history of chain-link fences; focusing on a selection of Ofili's photographs, he then begins to explore what this imagery tells us about Trinidad in particular and the Caribbean as a whole. These two essays--one visual, the other literary--open onto a whole new set of interpretive possibilities for this groundbreaking artist.

Chris Ofili: Paradise Lost

David Zwirner Books

As elements of our life move closer to art, and as art moves directly into life, the differences between the artificial and real are becoming progressively blurred. Form Follows Fiction focuses on a generation of artists who can no longer follow the modernist dictum "form follows function"; as our model of reality becomes more layered and less concrete, that decree morphs inevitably into "form follows fiction." Some of these artists create structures that intersect with everyday life, while others construct elaborate fictional systems that fuse elements of reality and fantasy. Some fashion elaborate invented worlds where past, present, and future are collapsed into one and where art historical icons and the debris of contemporary pop culture have equal relevance. All have developed new models of contemporary reality that are as fictional as they are real. Form Follows Fiction was conceived as a sequel to the 1992 exhibition Post Human, also curated by Jeffrey Deitch, which explored a new model of the human condition, pushing deep into the confusion between the artificial and the real.

Form Follows Fiction

Eliasson, Olafur

Aitken, Doug

Ritchie, Matthew

Ackermann, Franz

Orozco, Gabriel

Mori, Mariko

Guo-Qiang, Cai

Beecroft, Vanessa

Noble, Tim

Webster, Sue

Khedoori, Toba

Laurette, Matthieu

Kauper, Kurt

Manzelli, Margherita

Rist, Pipilotti

Gianelli, Ida

Charta

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