New York based visual artist Kehinde Wiley has been named on the 2018 TIME 100 Annual List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.Roberts Projects announced TIME named Kehinde Wiley to the 2018 TIME 100. The complete list along with related tributes appears in the April 30, 2018 issue of TIME. Now in its 15th year, this list recognizes the activism, innovation, and achievement of the world's most influential individuals. In the past, TIME editors have said, "The TIME 100 is a list of the world's most influential men and women, not its most powerful, though those are not mutually exclusive terms. While power is certain, influence is subtle. As much as this exercise chronicles the achievements of the past year, we also focus on figures whose influence is likely to grow, so we can look around the corner to see what is coming.”Los Angeles native Kehinde Wiley has earned a reputation within art history’s portrait painting tradition. He is a contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists, including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, among others. The artist likes to engage the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, majestic, and the sublime in his representation of urban, black, and brown men found throughout the world.Wiley applies visual vocabulary and conventions of glorification, history, wealth, and prestige to the subject matter drawn from the urban fabric, the subjects and stylistic references for his paintings. These are juxtaposed inversions of each other, forcing ambiguity and provocative perplexity to pervade his imagery. The larger than life figures in Wiley’s works tend to disturb and interrupt tropes of portrait painting. They often blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation and the critical portrayal of masculinity and physicality as it pertains to the view of black and brown young men.Wiley's figurative paintings and sculptures do not shy away from the complicated socio-political histories relevant to the world. The artist likes to “quote historical sources and position young black men within the field of power.” Most of these heroic paintings evoke a modern style instilling a unique and contemporary manner, awakening complex issues that many would prefer remain mute.
↧