Amoako Boafo (b.1984 Accra, Ghana; based in Vienna, Austria and Accra, Ghana) has built a practice synthesizing the ways that art both reflects and perpetuates the power of representation. Exclusively portraying individuals from the Diaspora and beyond, Boafo invites a reflection on Black subjectivity, diversity and complexity. His portraits are notable for their bold colors and patterns, which celebrate his subjects, as a means to challenge representation that objectifies and dehumanizes Blackness.Able to capture critical subtleties and nuanced emotion in a manner that grabs and engages the viewer, it is however Boafo’s tenderness in how he renders his subjects that is the most striking quality of his work. His powerful, concise style expresses the vibrancy of daily life with an easy familiarity, touching on topics such as community, social and political struggles, and the intimacy between like-minded friends.
The artist counts a diverse range of references as his influences, including Egon Schiele, Kerry James Marshall, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Henry Taylor, and Kehinde Wiley. As Boafo has put it, “the primary idea of my practice is representation, documenting, celebrating and showing new ways to approach Blackness.”
Boafo studied at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra, Ghana in 2007, before attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria for his MFA. Boafo was awarded with the jury prize, Walter Koschatzky Art Prize in 2017 and the STRABAG Art award International in 2019 both in Vienna, Austria. His first solo exhibition in the United States, entitledI See Me, opened at Roberts Projects in January 2019. Boafo was the first artist-in-residence at the new Rubell Museum in Miami, FL, which launched in 2019, organized through Roberts Projects. In 2020, the artist collaborated with Kim Jones, Dior Men’s creative director, for Dior’s Spring/Summer 2021 Men’s Collection. In 2021, Boafo was selected by the Uplift Art Program to create the inaugural “Suborbital Triptych” on the exterior panels of a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, to launch August 2021. Boafo’s latest efforts see the building of artist residency and permanent collection in Accra, the first of its kind in his hometown. Born and raised in Osu, Accra, Ghana, Amoako Boafo studied at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra in 2007, before attending the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria for his MFA. Boafo was awarded with the jury prize, Walter Koschatzky Art Prize in 2017 and the STRABAG Artaward International in 2019 both in Vienna, Austria. His first solo exhibition in the United States, entitled I See Me, opened at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles in January 2019. Boafo was the first artist-in-residence at the newly instituted Rubell Museum in Miami, FL in 2019, organized through Roberts Projects. In 2021, Boafo was selected by the Uplift Art Program to create the inaugural “Suborbital Triptych” on the exterior panels of a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, which launched the same year. Extensively collected by prestigious private and public institutions, Amoako Boafo’s paintings have recently joined the collection of The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MA; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; The Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai, China; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; The Rubell Museum, Miami, FL; the Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL, Aishti Foundation, Antelias, Lebanon; the Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; and The Albertina Museum Vienna, Austria, among others.
Anne Magill was born in County Down, Northern Ireland in 1962. She studied in Liverpool before moving to London to complete her degree at St Martin’s School of Art. After graduating in 1984, Anne Magill worked as an illustrator where she quickly built a reputation for her evocative drawings in charcoal and pastel, winning the B&H Gold Illustration Awards four times.
Alongside her work as a commercial artist, she started to experiment with more intimate charcoal drawings based on memories reflecting her time spent with the army in Belfast, at Greenham Common and in Paris during her studies. The rapid, reportage drawings she made during this time became the precursor to a mature style in which her highly atmospheric paintings are built from anonymous, intimate images, appearing like memories frozen in time.
Her work has won her international acclaim with work hanging in the collection of British Airways, Nike, Levi Strauss, Heineken, Canary Wharf, the Forte Group, SAP as well as major private collections worldwide.
Marisa Mu has been a practicing artist, designer and maker since graduating from her Bachelor of Design at The College of Fine Arts in 2014. The following year, she launched her own leather goods studio that combined her love and passion for colour and artisan leatherwork. The design studio of Mu has evolved over the years to now encompass a stronger focus on her personal mission statement for life.
Marisa’s purpose is to spark happiness and positive change within people through her art. Painting has become a form of therapy for her over the years and celebrating cultural diversity, womanhood and naked candidness is an embodiment of Marisa, both personally and professionally.
In 2019, Marisa and her business partner launched an online platform titled Tits & Co. with the purpose of recognising female-identifying artists from multi-disciplinary practices.
Untitled (Yellow and Blue) was completed by Mark Rothko in 1954 and would go on to receive one of the highest prices at auction of any his artworks. It is one of his simpler compositions from the Color Field movement, with two main areas of colour and a narrow band at the bottom of the painting.
Yannis Tsarouchis (Greek: Γιάννης Τσαρούχης; 13 January 1910 – 20 July 1989) was a gay Greekmodernistpainter and set designer who achieved international fame, and was "known in particular for his homoerotic subjects," including soldiers, sailors, and nude males.
Max Bill - Rot und grün aus blau und gelb (Red and green from blue and yellow), 1970
Max Bill was a great Swiss polymath: an artist, architect, industrial designer, graphic designer, and teacher. He attended the Bauhaus where he was taught by Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Oskar Schlemmer. Bill remained closely associated with the Bauhaus school and was a key figure in developing and propagating its principles, especially through his professorship at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich and as a founder of the Ulm School of Design. Through his pursuit of a new visual language that could be understood by the senses alone, Bill defined the conventions of Swiss design for decades to come. His influence spread even as far as South America, where he was a catalyst for the Concrete Art movement.
Hugh Steers (1962–1995) was born in Washington, D.C., and trained in painting at Yale University, New Haven, CT and Parsons School of Art and Design, New York, NY. Before his death at 32 from AIDS-related complications, Steers created allegorical images of everyday life that captured the emotional and political tenor of New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Embracing representational painting and figuration at a time when such approaches were deemed unfashionable, his intimate compositions are poignant symbols of life under the specter of AIDS.
I'm Wojciech and I'm 27. I grew up in a small border town between Poland and Germany. Since I was a child, I was sensitive for the beauty and aesthetically pleasing objects and I wanted to be surrounded by it. Joining the local culture house helped me to understand my needs and try out creative techniques for the first time. I made my first steps with photography, drawing, painting and sculpture. This experience helped me to find what I really wanted to do at very young age and here we are - I have my own website now and I still follow this fascinating path. I left Poland by the age 19 and relocated to Northern Ireland where I studied Fine Arts and shaped myself like a little claydough into something more defined. Currently based in Berlin where I'm learning more about my creative practice.
I PAINT BOYS.
My paintings are very QUEER orientated. I treat my art as a some sort of diary with my deepest thoughts and experiences. It's about love, dissapointment, mental health, hate, warmth and more. It's about us.
