The Studio Museum in Harlem is one of the city's more vibrant cultural institutions; unlike many more sterile environments, it somehow manages to make art feel both sacred within its space and still connected to the buzz and din of the street outside without losing anything in either sense.
Last weekend, I checked out Afromuses, an exhibition of nearly 200 hundred watercolors created over the past decade by Chris Ofili, one of the most intriguing and talented painters working today. Seemingly intended as figurative studies and launching pads for larger works, they retain a special beauty on their own as organized with the gifted eye of curator Thelma Golden.
I was struck by the rich jeweltones of the pieces -- no washed-out, generic meadows these, each one is a beautiful mix of bold colors, deep mahogany, and rich ochre, with tie-dyed, intricately patterned clothing that often looks like block-print African fabrics but is sometimes just pleasantly ornate. The endless sea of faces that seem more archetypal than personal reminds me of Walker Evans' subway photos, in a way, especially when the focus of the subject's expressions are directed at someplace else than the viewer.
Ofili's men are often in profile, while women face forward, smiling or amused, some bejeweled more than others, and interspersed among them all are a few depictions of birds and flowers. Betweek Ofili's deft hand and Golden's appealing presentation, the show is, more than anything, an intriguing view into the day-to-day experience of how Ofili works, and I was taken with imagining how he might translate some of the ideas explored in these smaller works into larger concepts. No matter the perspective, though, Afromuses is quite a gem. Through July 3 at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Semi-related: "Modern art is a load of bullshit."
Next: "Bill Traylor, William Edmondson & The Modernist Impulse."
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