Kehinde Wiley goes from portraits to landscapes in new show



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Organized by the National Gallery in London, the exhibition will include both paintings and a film when it premieres later this winter.

Kehinde Wiley, In search of the miraculous (film still) (2021). Video. Courtesy of the Stephen Friedman Gallery and the Templon Gallery.

Kehinde Wiley rose to prominence by painting portraits of black subjects rendered in the style of the Old Masters. In a new exhibition announced by the National Gallery in London, he will try out something different.

‘[Kehinde Wiley] will engage in the sublime landscape traditions of Western painting and I look forward to his strong and distinctive take on this subject, ”said Dr Gabriele Finaldi, Director of the National Gallery.

The works will enter into dialogue with landscape and seascape paintings by romantic painters from the National Gallery’s collection such as Claude Lorrain, Caspar David Friedrich, JMW Turner and Claude-Joseph Vernet.

Although the title and dates of the exhibition have yet to be decided, the National Gallery has announced that Wiley will be exhibiting both paintings and a film which he has cast the Black Londoners actors he has met around. of the National Gallery.

This is not the first time that Wiley has worked in film. His video installation Fool’s ship premiered at the British Film Institute in 2017. The work was inspired by the theme “Ship of Fools”, an allegory about a ship with an incompetent crew that spread across Europe from the late 15th century. In the work, Wiley depicts a group of black men stranded at sea – a metaphor for centuries of migration and social upheaval.

Born in Los Angeles, Wiley generally paints anonymous young subjects, raising them in majestic and richly decorated settings. He also painted well-known figures, such as Michael Jackson, who commissioned a portrait in 2007.

Wiley’s most famous portrait to date is that of Barack Obama, which shows the former US President sitting and surrounded by green foliage and flora referencing his background – blue lilies for Kenya , jasmine for Hawaii and chrysanthemums for Chicago. With Amy Sherald’s portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, Wiley President Barack Obama doubled attendance at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC when it opened in 2018.

Finaldi said the National Gallery’s plans to collaborate with Wiley began shortly after in early 2019. -[O]



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