wejetset - magazine - Local Events: DOWN by Kehinde Wiley at NYC's Deitch Gallery

Local Events: DOWN by Kehinde Wiley at NYC's Deitch Gallery

Written by Brittany Kleinman Gleaming through the large glass garage door at 18 Wooster Street, new works by Kehinde Wiley stand heroically tall inside the gallery walls. DOWN an exhibition with seven works scaling up to twenty-five feet in length, was initially inspired by historically religious paintings from the past. Using poses of fallen characters such as Holbein, Mantegna, Houdon and Maderno, Wiley re-conceptualizes classical pictorial forms to create a contemporary version of monumental portraiture.

Wiley’s DOWN series is “an answer to the negative views of young black men in American Society. It recognizes an idiom that can’t be seen from a distance as a negative form translated into something more fabulous and joyful. DOWN is a recognition of a type of artist malaise that exists in current dialogue in art where joy is perceived as suspect and where absolute beauty is regarded with disdain. DOWN is at once an embrace of the visceral and the very physical embodiment of its denial.”

All of the painting’s subjects are African-American men in their teens and twenties found locally in Brooklyn. DOWN runs until December 20th at Deitch Project Gallery at 18 Wooster Street, NYC.