Works Exhibited

About

The primary idea of my practice is representation, documenting, celebrating, and showing new ways to approach Blackness.
—Amoako Boafo

Amoako Boafo reimagines the canon of portraiture, emerging as a key artist in defining the contemporary culture of Africa and the African diaspora. His elegant paintings elevate his subjects, capturing their confidence, style, and character. To depict the figures in his portraits, Boafo manipulates pigment with his fingers rather than with a brush, tracing gestures through direct touch.

Boafo was born in 1984 in Accra, Ghana, where he currently lives and works. After teaching himself to draw and paint as a child, he pursued various professions in his early career, most notably semiprofessional tennis. He graduated from Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra in 2008, winning the college’s award for best portrait painter that year. In 2013, Boafo relocated to Vienna, and with artist and curator Sunanda Mesquita founded WE DEY, a center for exhibitions, workshops, and community programs that advocated for artists of color and LGBTQ+ voices.

Encountering the marginalization of Black people in Austria, Boafo decided to focus on portraits of Black subjects, who remain underrepresented in global contemporary art. Inspired by the expressionistic portraiture of Vienna Secession artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, he counts among his contemporary influences Jordan Casteel, Maria Lassnig, Kerry James Marshall, and Kehinde Wiley.

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Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2026

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2026

The Summer 2026 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Ellen Gallagher’s Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish (2026) on the cover.

Jenny Saville a Ca’ Pesaro

Jenny Saville a Ca’ Pesaro

In this video, Jenny Saville sits down inside her first major exhibition in Venice to discuss how the great Venetian artists of the past and the city’s heritage influence her work. The show brings together more than thirty canvases and works on paper from the 1990s to the present, tracing the development of her practice, which is deeply rooted in the history of painting.

Alex Israel: Upside Down

Alex Israel: Upside Down

Ahead of Alex Israel’s exhibition of four new Fin sculptures at Gagosian, London, the artist spoke with Susan Casey, author of The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean (2010), about the ocean, surfing, and Los Angeles.

Simon Hantaï: The Paradox of the "last studio"

Simon Hantaï: The Paradox of the "last studio"

On July 9, Simon Hantaï: the last studio opens at Gagosian, Gstaad. Curated by Anne Baldassari, the show comprises sixteen of the artist’s dernier atelier (last studio) paintings of 1982–85. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, copublished by Gagosian and Skira, which features an essay by Baldassari and an extensive portfolio of previously unpublished photographs by Édouard Boubat. Here, we share the introductory chapter from the publication.

James Turrell: Lifting the Veil

James Turrell: Lifting the Veil

An exhibition at Gagosian, Hong Kong, brings together three of James Turrell’s Glasswork pieces along with site plans, photographs, and models of his Skyspaces and Roden Crater. Here, Alice Godwin explores the history of the Glassworks and their relationship to the artist’s wider practice.

Derrick Adams: View Master

Derrick Adams: View Master

On April 16, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, opened the first midcareer survey of Derrick Adams’s multidisciplinary practice. Covering over twenty years of work, the exhibition, titled View Master, brings together the artist’s painting, sculpture, collage, performance, and video, as well as a vibrant new commission created for the museum’s façade. Ahead of the opening, Adams met with Tessa Bachi Haas, cocurator of the survey, to discuss his formative experiences with television, the impact of his work in arts education on his practice, and the importance of taking a more complex, more joyful, and more expansive approach to Black American life and culture.

Giuseppe Penone: The Reflection of Bronze

Giuseppe Penone: The Reflection of Bronze

Adam D. Weinberg has been working with Giuseppe Penone on an exhibition of the artist’s new sculptures, The Reflection of Bronze, that opens at Gagosian, New York, on April 22. The works explore the character and possibilities of bronze. Here, Weinberg considers Penone’s enduring engagement with the alloy and addresses the conceptual underpinnings of the exhibition’s three-room structure.

A Tremendous Generosity: Jeff Koons on Marcel Duchamp

A Tremendous Generosity: Jeff Koons on Marcel Duchamp

Jeff Koons tells Alison McDonald about his appreciation for the pioneering artist and thinker Marcel Duchamp.

On Walter De Maria: Donna De Salvo and Lucy Raven

On Walter De Maria: Donna De Salvo and Lucy Raven

The Singular Experience at Gagosian’s Le Bourget gallery is the largest exhibition of Walter De Maria’s work in France in several decades. Organized by Donna De Salvo, senior adjunct curator at Dia Art Foundation, the exhibition marks the first time De Maria’s final sculpture, Truck Trilogy (2011–17), is being shown outside of the United States. Here, De Salvo speaks with artist Lucy Raven about her evolving kinship with De Maria and more.

Henry Moore: Monumental Nature

Henry Moore: Monumental Nature

Laura Bruni writes about a major exhibition celebrating the work of the British sculptor Henry Moore at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London.

A Revolution in Jewels: Pomellato at Palais de Tokyo

A Revolution in Jewels: Pomellato at Palais de Tokyo

The exhibition Pomellato, Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire opened at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, on June 24. The Italian jewelry house’s trailblazing advertising campaigns—created by some of the most consequential names in photography—act as the narrative arc of the exhibition, curated by Alba Cappellieri. Here, Sarah Godfrey tracks Pomellato’s history, speaks with Cappellieri about what drew her to this project, and examines some of the key photographs from the show.

Georg Baselitz and the Possibilities of Print

Georg Baselitz and the Possibilities of Print

On the occasion of Baselitz: AVANTI! at the Museo Novecento in Florence, Italy, Holly EJ Black considers the roots and reverberations of Georg Baselitz’s printmaking.

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Amoako Boafo

Front of Kids of the Diaspora: Proper Love Shirt for Amoako Boafo

Kids of the Diaspora: Proper Love Shirt for Amoako Boafo

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Cover of the book Amoako Boafo: what could possibly go wrong, if we tell it like it is

Amoako Boafo: what could possibly go wrong, if we tell it like it is

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Cover of Amoako Boafo: Proper Love book

Amoako Boafo: Proper Love

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Amoako Boafo: Double Deck Playing Card Set

Amoako Boafo: Double Deck Playing Card Set

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