Chris Ofili
Chris Ofili Chelsea School of Art Royal College of Art | |
---|---|
Known for | Painting |
Notable work | No Woman No Cry (1998), The Adoration of Captain Shit and the Legend of the Black Stars (1998), The Upper Room (2002) |
Awards | 1998 Turner Prize |
Christopher Ofili,
Ofili has utilized resin, beads, oil paint, glitter, lumps of elephant dung and cut-outs from pornographic magazines as painting elements. His work has been classified as "punk art."
Early life and education
Ofili was born in
Ofili visited
Career
Ofili's early work was heavily influenced by
Ofili was established through exhibitions by
In 1992 he won a scholarship that allowed him to travel to Zimbabwe. Ofili studied cave paintings there, which had some effect on his style.
Between 1995 and 2005, Ofili focused on a series of watercolors, each about 9½ by 6½ inches and produced in a single sitting.[6] They predominantly feature heads of men and women, as well as some studies of flowers and birds.[7] Ofili's paintings also make reference to blaxploitation films and gangsta rap, seeking to question racial and sexual stereotypes in a humorous way. In a series of faces that Ofili called Harems, each arrangement consists of one man with as many as four women on each side of him.[7]
Ofili's work is often built up in layers of paint, resin, glitter, dung (mainly elephant) and other materials to create a collage. Though Ofili's detractors often state that he "splatters"[8] elephant dung on his pictures, this is inaccurate: he sometimes applies it directly to the canvas in the form of dried spherical lumps, and sometimes, in the same form, uses it as varnished foot-like supports on which the paintings stand.
Ofili has been founder and prime mover behind the short-lived Freeness Project.[9] This project involved the coming together of artists, producers and musicians of minority ethnic groups (Asian and African) in an attempt to expose the music that may be unheard in other spaces. Freeness allowed the creativity of unsigned contemporary British ethnic minority artists to be heard. The result of months of tours to 10 cities in the UK resulted in Freeness Volume 1 – a compilation of works that were shown during the tour.
After relocating to Trinidad in 2005, Ofili began a series of blue paintings inspired by the Jab Jab or "blue devils" who participate in the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, and the Expressionist group of German and Russian artists, Der Blaue Reiter. These paintings often employed the use of a silver, acrylic background with layers of dark oil pigment on top.[10][11] Later iterations of these works were shown at Ofili's solo show Chris Ofili: Day and Night at The New Museum of New York which were installed in a very dimly lit room, causing viewers to adjust their eyes to the darkness in order to see the paintings.[12]
Ofili was appointed
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Chris Ofili
Saatchi Collection 2017 -
Union Black – Chris Ofili – Tate Britain (2010)
Exhibitions
Ofili's work was featured in a museum in the 1995 exhibition Brilliant! New Art from London at the Walker Art Center.[15] Significant solo exhibitions include the Arts Club of Chicago (2010), Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover (2006), the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2005), and Southampton City Art Gallery (1998). In 2010, Tate Britain presented the most extensive exhibition of his work to date.[16][17] In 2014, The New Museum in New York presented the first, major solo show of Ofili's work in the U.S. titled Chris Ofili: Night and Day.[12]
Controversy
The Holy Virgin Mary
One of his paintings,
The Upper Room and the Tate Gallery
The Upper Room is an installation of 13 paintings of
Art market
His Orgena, a glittery portrait of a black woman created by the artist for his Turner Prize-winning exhibit at the Tate in 1998 was sold to an American collector for a record GBP 1.8 million, over its GBP 1 million high estimate, at Christie's London in 2010.[23] In 2015, art collector David Walsh sold Ofili's 8-foot-tall The Holy Virgin Mary for 2.9 million pounds at Christie's.[24]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Calvin Tomkins (6 October 2014), "Into the Unknown: Chris Ofili returns to New York with a major retrospective", The New Yorker.
- ^ "Ofili, Chris, b.1968". Art UK. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
- ^ Chris Ofili Brief biography on ham. Retrieval Date: 26 July 2007.
- ^ "AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLIE DARK OF ATTICA BLUES". Mo Wax Please. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
- ^ Roberta Smith (30 October 2014), "Medium and Message, Both Unsettling: ‘Chris Ofili: Night and Day,’ a Survey at the New Museum", The New York Times.
- ^ Michael Kimmelman (8 May 2005), "Wake Up. Wash Face. Do Routine. Now Paint", The New York Times.
- ^ a b Carol Vogel (5 May 2005), "An Artist's Gallery of Ideas: Chris Ofili's Watercolors", The New York Times.
- ^ The Independent, 27 February 2000
- ^ Free stuff Archived 24 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine by James Cowdery, 22 September 2005.
- ^ www.absoluto.de, martin weise //. "db artmag - all the news on Deutsche Bank Art / db artmag - alle Infos zur Kunst der Deutschen Bank". db-artmag.de. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
- ^ a b "Chris Ofili: Night and Day". www.newmuseum.org. Retrieved 8 December 2016.
- ^ "No. 61803". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2016. p. N9.
- ^ Hicks, Amber (23 October 2018). "List of 100 most influential black people includes Meghan Markle for first time". mirror. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
- ^ Chris Ofili, Third Eye Vision (1999) Archived 6 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
- ^ Michael Glover, "Shock and awe: The art of Chris Ofili", The Independent, 22 January 2010.
- ^ Adrian Searle (25 January 2010), "Chris Ofili heads into the shadows", The Guardian.
- ^ Will Bennett, "Elephant dung artist gives a little back", The Telegraph, 22 February 2002.
- ^ Robert Ayers (20 November 2007), Red Grooms's Chris Ofili Drawing, ARTINFO, retrieved 17 April 2008
- ^ Gabriella Coslovich (14 April 2007), The Collector, The Age, archived from the original on 10 July 2012, retrieved 24 December 2010
- ^ "Giuliani vs. the Virgin". The New Yorker. Retrieved 29 May 2018.
- ^ Charlotte Higgins, "How the Tate broke the law", The Guardian, 19 July 2006.
- ^ Kelly Crow (1 July 2010), "Christie's Sells Warhol 'Silver Liz' for GBP 6.8 Million", The Wall Street Journal.
- Bloomberg Business.
External links
- Caroline Deeds and Kate Vogel "Artist Chris Ofili: beyond the tears", The Guardian, 3 February 2010. Tate Media film about Chris Ofili's 2010 exhibition at Tate Modern and how his move to Trinidad has freed up his work.
- Chris Ofili at the Museum of Modern Art
- Chris Ofili page, David Zwirner.
- Victoria Miro Gallery: Chris Ofili
- "Turner Prize 1998 artists: Chris Ofili", Tate.
- "Chris Ofili profile", BBC, 1 December 1998
- Defence of the Tate The Upper Room purchase.
- Criticism of the Tate The Upper Room purchase. Stuckism.
- Mark Hudson, "Chris Ofili: 'I wander deep into the forest - where it's scary'", The Telegraph, 25 January 2010.
- Chris Ofili, Rizzoli International, Fall 2009. Contributors include David Adjaye, Thelma Golden, Okwui Enwezor, Peter Doig and Kara Walker.
- "Shock and awe: The art of Chris Ofili"; feature by Michael Glover, and extract from "Ekow Eshun interviews Chris Ofili", edited by Helen Little in Chris Ofili (Tate Publishing, 2010), The Independent, 22 January 2010.
- Chris Ofili. Edited by Massimiliano Gioni, Gary Carrion-Murayari and Margot Norton. Skira Rizzoli, 2014. ISBN 978-0-8478-4456-2