On Friday, Kehinde Wiley's exhibit will be unveiled at the Brooklyn Museum. Taking over the fifth floor through May 24th, the show aims to "raise questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation by portraying contemporary African American men and women using the conventions of traditional European portraiture." It's a classic-contemporary mash-up, and here's how his process works:
The subjects in Wiley's paintings often wear sneakers, hoodies, and baseball caps, gear associated with hip-hop culture, and are set against contrasting ornate decorative backgrounds that evoke earlier eras and a range of cultures. Through the process of "street casting," Wiley invites individuals, often strangers he encounters on the street, to sit for portraits. In this collaborative process, the model chooses a reproduction of a painting from a book and reenacts the pose of the painting’s figure. By inviting the subjects to select a work of art, Wiley gives them a measure of control over the way they're portrayed.
The exhibit, titled The New Republic, includes an overview of the artist's 14-year career ,and features sixty paintings and sculptures in total. Photographer Sai Mokhtari dropped by earlier this week, and described it as "beautiful and provocative"—click through and check out her preview, but you're going to want to see this one in person.
If Wiley's work looks familiar, perhaps you caught it back in 2011, when his paintings were featured on top of 500 New York City taxi cabs.
