KEHINDE WILEY
Scenic
September 8 - October 14, 2006
Rhona Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present its third solo exhibition of new paintings by Kehinde Wiley opening on Friday, September 8, from 5 – 7:30 pm. The artist will be present.
“Kehinde Wiley’s provocative portraits mine deeply rooted traditions of Western painting to address the ongoing cultural construction of identity. Upon the historic armature of sacred and secular themes provided by the Old Masters, Wiley configures an authoritative image of the urban black male that counters and complicates the standard version proffered in mainstream America. His resplendent portraits of the twenty-first-century heirs to the hip-hop nation, garbed in basketball jerseys, gold chains, and Nike trainers, provoke a reconsideration of racial and gender stereotypes, while deconstructing the very modes and means of representation.”
This new body of work, titled "Scenic,” is comprised of portrait paintings inspired by those of German Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger (c.1497-1543) whose works Wiley recently observed in a large and important exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Basel, Switzerland. While the subjects of Wiley’s paintings assume the postures of those in Holbein’s portraits, the backgrounds resemble French scenic wallpaper, which was favored by the wealthy upper class in the 1800s.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Kehinde Wiley earned his MFA from Yale University, and holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In the spring of 2001, he moved to New York to participate in the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 2007, Wiley will have a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Concurrent with this exhibition is a solo show at the Columbus Museum of Art, titled Columbus, September 8, 2006 – January 7, 2007.
Gallery hours are Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 am–5:30 pm, Saturday 11:00 am– 5:30 pm, Contact Kat Parker or Katie Rashid at 312.455.1990 for further information and press photography.
Houston, Joe, “Kehinde Wiley: Columbus”, Kehinde Wiley: Columbus, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio and Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, California, 2006, p. 5.