Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe (Ghanaian, Born 1990) Untitled, 2017 ((3))
Provenance : [Timeline chronologique]
2021-04-08 | Why Are They Staring So Deeply at Me?'', Elephant Magazine, 8 April 2021, online 'Black Like Me – Paintings by Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe', NevahBlackDown: A Magazine, 13 January 2020, online
[Propriété non datée]
- Commissioned from the artist by the present owner in 2017
- Commissioned by the present owner in 2017, the three works exemplify Ghanian artist Otis Kwame Key Quaicoe's riotous celebration of colour which has come to characterise his approach to portraiture
- His kinetic application of richly saturated hues carves out the head and shoulders of the women from backdrops swept with violet purple, mossy green, and bluish grey
- For Quaicoe, colour is not simply employed as a pictorial element, but is imbued with feeling. 'Yellow, bright green, orange, pink... they are colors that make me feel alive
- Any time I see bright yellow it just makes me really happy' (Quaicoe quoted in Steer, 2021)
- Quaicoe rejects naturalism to embrace the emotive potential of his palette: 'Color means a great deal where I come from
- It's a distinguishing quality – a means of self-expression' (Quaicoe quoted in NevahBlackDown: A Magazine, 2020)
- The brightly coloured lips of the female figures – fiery red, sunny yellow, and cool blue – act as a device that unites the three works while granting each portrait a distinctive character
- He began visiting artists' studios to observe their practice and attempted to imitate their techniques
- One of these local artists referred Quaicoe to the Ghanatta College of Art and Design where he undertook an MFA in painting
- The young artist conceived of his training as a period of experimentation but felt that it was only following his graduation in 2008 that he found his own creative vision
- In 2017, he left Ghana for Portland, Oregon, where he continues to live and work today
- He has since garnered international acclaim for his empowering depictions of black subjects
- The present works were created at a pivotal moment in Quaicoe's practice
- They mark a turning point at which the artist moved from a heavily stylised depiction of his figures to pursue figurative realism
- The three portraits of women mark an intermediary stage in this transition, casting them as significant works within the artist's developing oeuvre
- In his more recent works, the vibrant palette used to articulate the women's faces are restricted to his figures' clothing and the backgrounds, while the blue-grey used to depict the woman with blue lips has become the standard hue of his subjects' skin tones
- In 2020 Quaicoe held his first solo exhibition in America at the Roberts Projects, Los Angeles
- Titled Black Like Me, the show established the artist's distinctive intervention in contemporary portraiture
- His luminous oil paintings of black subjects asserted his ongoing thematic exploration of representation in relation to the Africa diaspora
- The exhibition catapulted Quaicoe to critical attention and in 2021 he undertook the prestigious residency at the Rubell Museum, Miami, which culminated in his first solo museum show
- Quaicoe is now widely considered to be one of the foremost figurative artists working today
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