Curator's introduction: Kehinde Wiley

Useful online talk from the National Gallery introducing their exhibition of new work by contemporary artist, Kehinde Wiley.

The talk was given, by Christine Rider , shortly before the exhibition opened who introduced us to some of Wiley’s previous work and the themes of the show. I knew of Wiley’s portrait of President Obama and recognised some of the other imaged but it was interesting to learn more about the ideas behind his work.

I have since seen the show so this blog looks at the talk rather than reviewing the show itself which will follow shortly. It was really helpful to learn more about Wiley’s practice of casting his pictures from seeing striking people on the street. He then works with them on the pose in the finished work and sees the process as a collaboration.

Riding also gave us an outline of two projects from 2017 which have fed into this new work. “The Trickster”, a series of 20 portraits of black artists and “In Search of the Miraculous” in which he responded to sea images by artists like Winslow Homer.

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