Kehinde Wiley : The Prelude

Beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery of new work by contemporary artist, Kehinda Wiley.

The first room had five of Wiley’s wonderful hyper-realistic paintings taking inspiration from Winslow Homer, Bosch’s Ship of Fools and Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wander Above the Sea of Fog”. Each insert modern, black characters, cast by Wiley from the streets, into the context of the original work. I loved the combination of the art historic and the modern and their highly finished style.

The second room was a six-screen video, placing black figures within a Norwegian landscape. It lasted about half an hour and was mesmeric. It had echoes of the sublime in landscape painting and was accompanied by reading of sections of Wordsworth’s “Prelude” placing the piece in the romantic tradition.

My only criticism would be that two of the paintings are so large and the room is quite small so it is hard to stand back far enough to appreciate them properly or to see their effect from a distance. On the plus side though it was good to get close to see the fine detail although, on both occasions I went, I was so pulled into the detail I nearly fell over the wire in front of them.

A plus on my second visit was that a bench had been added to video room, a relief for those of who were worried about not being able to get up off the floor!

Closes 18 April 2022

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