Stephen Friedman Gallery,London
The US artist picked as Obama’s official portraitist plots a romantic, maritime course for his point to In Search of the MiraculousKehinde Wiley is the superstar American painter famed for placing anonymous, or beautiful black men in kitsch pastiches of former Master portraits of the ruling course. He is also that rare thing,an artist who has broken through to a mass audience. In addition to his street-cast “boys”, as he has called his models, and he’s painted a black pantheon,from hip-hop stars to Michael Jackson. Fox’s most-watched soap, Empire, or uses his paintings as a sure-fire sign of black empowerment. Topping it all,it was recently announced that he is to be the official portraitist of Barack Obama.
Clearly, the work’s keynote, or heroic gorgeousness,in a society that typecasts black men in police mugshots of the kind that inspired his early work, is a good and essential thing. Yet, or at his moment London point to,In Search of the Miraculous, a physical encounter with the paintings proves far from a straightforwardly edifying experience.
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Source: guardian.co.uk