Posts Tagged ‘Brazil’

Kehinde Wiley takes on tradition by shaking up the art historical concept of a portrait.  Cruising through the European painting wing of LACMA, you and I are no stranger to portraits of heavy-set royal families, stogy officials,  and dog-faced children dressed in layers of ruffles and with the pinkest of cheeks.  Wiley reevaluates large-scale portraiture and makes the historical contemporary as his subjects are young brown and black men from the urban landscapes of his native Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Mumbai, Senegal, Dakar, and Rio de Janeiro. His subjects are dressed in street clothes of everyday life–with no ruffles to be found.

Wiley continues this dialogue with his show The World Stage: Brazil, part of the The World Stage series, at Roberts and Tilton. Wiley constructed The World Stage as a medium to explore the world, examining the four corners of the world to form a vast body of work. “Through Wiley’s extensive investigative exchange, the artist’s contemporary yet historical oeuvre accentuates international cultures and their denizens, evoking discourse on an ever-expanding examination of globalization,”  Roberts and Tilton say about this series.

During Wiley’s residency in Rio de Janeiro, the artist sought Afro-Brazilian men to redesign the traditional depictions of government officials and elite.  Adorning the background of his large scale paintings, Wiley paints textile-like and floral patterns using vibrant colors of a Brazil that also creep into the foreground to form depth. The end result is universal.

And if you are worried this show might not be your cup of tea or that his work isn’t of the museum institution caliber among those vanitas still life paintings and haystacks, never fear.  His work is already there.

Kehinde Wiley’s show The World Stage: Brazil runs until May 30 at Roberts and Tilton in Culver City.