About
If we don’t amend history by making new images and new representations, we are always going to be excluding ourselves.
—Titus Kaphar
Painter, sculptor, filmmaker, and installation artist Titus Kaphar confronts history by dismantling classical structures and styles of visual representation in Western art in order to subvert them. Dislodging entrenched narratives from their status as “past” so as to understand and estimate their impact on the present, he exposes the conceptual underpinnings of contested nationalist histories and colonialist legacies and how they have served to manipulate both cultural and personal identity.
Through the deconstructive techniques of cutting, shredding, stitching, binding, and erasing both subject and support, Kaphar reconstructs new codes and modalities, reckoning on Black possibilities. In Yet Another Fight for Remembrance (2014), he used thick white brushstrokes to obscure the gesturing bodies of a group of African American men in the “Hands up, don’t shoot” position, and then repainted their outlines in black to reassert their formal presence. Thus the painting process itself became the embodiment of the ongoing struggle for social visibility and recognition. During his 2017 TED Talk, Kaphar performed, onstage, the whitewashing of his large-scale painting Shifting the Gaze (2017). Based on Frans Hals’s Family Group in a Landscape (1645–48), which portrays a wealthy Dutch family and their African servant, Kaphar’s version eclipsed the family group with white paint, shifting attention entirely to the presence of this young servant.
Kaphar’s art addresses salient social and political concerns, but it also springs from his own life story. For example, his encounter with his estranged father, Jerome, has led to an ongoing multimedia exploration of the criminal justice system called The Jerome Project (2014–). This series of portraits began with Kaphar’s online discovery of the mug shots of ninety-seven African American men who shared his father’s first and last names. He paints gilded portraits of each man in the style of Byzantine devotional icons, and then dips them in tar. Initially, the depth to which each painting was immersed in tar corresponded to the time that each subject had spent behind bars; in later paintings, this has increased to represent the longer-term implications of social silencing that results from their incarceration.
Photo: John Lucas
#TitusKaphar
Website
Exhibitions
Black Futurity: Lessons in (Art) History to Forge a Path Forward
Jon Copes asks, What can Black History Month mean in the year 2024? He looks to a selection of scholars and artists for the answer.
Titus Kaphar and Derek Cianfrance
Titus Kaphar and director Derek Cianfrance spoke on the opening night of Titus Kaphar Selects, a film program curated by the artist as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph in the spring of 2023. The pair discussed their respective practices, including Cianfrance’s film Blue Valentine (2010) and Kaphar’s film Exhibiting Forgiveness, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2024.
NXTHVN: Curatorial Visions
Jamillah Hinson and Marissa Del Toro, recent curatorial fellows of Titus Kaphar’s nonprofit community arts hub NXTHVN, address their curatorial praxes.
In Conversation
Titus Kaphar and Zoé Whitley
Join Titus Kaphar and Zoé Whitley as they discuss the artist’s recent exhibition New Alte̲rs: Reworking Devotion, featuring paintings and sculptures in which Kaphar examines the history of representation by altering the work’s supports to reveal oft unspoken social and political truths.
NXTHVN
NXTHVN is a new national arts model that empowers emerging artists and curators of color through education and access. Through intergenerational mentorship, professional development, and cross-sector collaboration, NXTHVN accelerates professional careers in the arts. Join Titus Kaphar and Jason Price on a tour of the organization’s headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut. They discuss the founding and vision for this singular arts space.
Titus Kaphar: From a Tropical Space
Join the artist in his studio in New Haven, Connecticut, where he speaks about his latest paintings.
Titus Kaphar: Can Beauty Open Our Hearts to Difficult Conversations?
In this TED talk, presented during the sweeping protests against racism and police violence following the killing of George Floyd, Titus Kaphar describes how the beauty of a painting can draw the viewer in and allow difficult conversations to emerge. Kaphar discusses his own work and shares the idea behind NXTHVN, a new national arts model he founded to empower artists of color through education and access.
Seeing the Child: Braiding possibility
Titus Kaphar and Tochi Onyebuchi present an excerpt from their short story “Seeing the Child,” a poetic rumination on Kaphar’s latest body of work, From a Tropical Space (2019–).
Titus Kaphar: In the Studio
Jacoba Urist reports on a recent trip to the artist’s studio in New Haven, Connecticut, to see his new body of work, From a Tropical Space (2019–). She writes on the emotional and sensory impact of these paintings and considers their singular place in Titus Kaphar’s oeuvre.
Titus Kaphar: Intricate Illusion
Bridget R. Cooks investigates the aesthetic and narrative conventions deployed by the artist, demonstrating how his paintings force provocative confrontations with history through complex modes of depiction.
Titus Kaphar: Can Art Amend History?
Join Titus Kaphar as he talks about making paintings and sculptures that wrestle with the struggles of the past while speaking to the diversity and advances of the present. Working onstage, he points to the narratives coded in the language of art history as he creates a new painting, demonstrating how shifting our focus can prompt us to ask questions and confront unspoken truths.
Fairs, Events & Announcements
Honor
Titus Kaphar
Brooklyn Artists Ball 2024
Titus Kaphar is the honoree of the 2024 Brooklyn Artists Ball, taking place on April 9 in New York. Kaphar—a Brooklyn Museum trustee and cofounder and president of the nonprofit arts hub NXTHVN—was selected for his innumerable contributions as both a trailblazing artist and a community-focused activist. The Artists Ball is the museum’s largest fundraiser, generating pivotal revenue in support of programming that spans special exhibitions and reimagined collection installations as well as educational programs for visitors of all ages.
Titus Kaphar. Photo: Sasha Arutyunova/The New York Times/Redux
Screening
Exhibiting Forgiveness
New Directors/New Films 2024
April 5–6, 2024
Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, New York
www.newdirectors.org
Exhibiting Forgiveness (2023), a film written, directed, and produced by Titus Kaphar, has been selected for New Directors/New Films 2024, a festival presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art that showcases emerging directors working at the vanguard of cinema. Exploring family, generational healing, and the power of forgiveness, the motion picture follows a Black artist (André Holland) attempting to overcome the trauma of his past through painting; he is on the path to success when he is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father. In its New York premiere, Exhibiting Forgiveness will be screened on April 5 and 6, followed by question-and-answer sessions with Kaphar and Holland.
Still from Exhibiting Forgiveness (2023), directed by Titus Kaphar
Art Fair
Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
March 27–30, 2024
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
www.artbasel.com
Gagosian is participating in Art Basel Hong Kong 2024 with a selection of works by international contemporary artists. The works on view, which embrace a dizzying variety of subjects and approaches, see the participating artists identify fresh ways to disrupt established histories of abstraction and figuration, and instill sculptural and painterly representations of the natural world with complex cultural significance.
Sarah Sze, Turning and Turning, 2024 © Sarah Sze. Photo: Maris Hutchinson
Museum Exhibitions
On View
The Time Is Always Now
Artists Reframe the Black Figure
Through May 19, 2024
National Portrait Gallery, London
www.npg.org.uk
The Time Is Always Now showcases the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora and highlights their use of figures to illuminate the richness and complexity of Black life. The exhibition examines both the presence and the absence of Black figures in Western art history and the social, psychological, and cultural contexts in which they were produced. Work by Titus Kaphar and Nathaniel Mary Quinn is included.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Father Stretch My Hands, 2021 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Photo: Rob McKeever
On View
Giants
Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys
Through July 7, 2024
Brooklyn Museum, New York
www.brooklynmuseum.org
Giants, the first major exhibition of the Dean Collection, owned by musical icons Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) and Alicia Keys, showcases a focused selection from the couple’s world-class holdings and spotlights works by Black diasporic artists. Expansive in their collecting habits, the Deans, both born and raised in New York, champion a philosophy of “artists supporting artists.” “Giants” refers to the renown of legendary artists, the impact of canon-expanding contemporary figures, and some of the monumental works in the collection. Work by Derrick Adams, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Titus Kaphar, and Deana Lawson is included.
Derrick Adams, Woman in Grayscale (Alicia), 2017 © Derrick Adams Studio
On View
New Symphony of Time
Opened September 7, 2019
Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson
www.msmuseumart.org
New Symphony of Time expands the boundaries of Mississippi’s identity, casting light on a shared past to help reflect an expansive, more inclusive future. The exhibition aims to explore personal and collective memory, history and the connection to place, and the roles artists play in pursuit of civil rights and racial equity through ancestry. Themes include migration, movement, and home; shared humanity; environment; and liberty. Work by Titus Kaphar and Sally Mann is included.
Sally Mann, Deep South, Untitled (Emmett Till River Bank), 1998 © Sally Mann
Closed
Going Dark
The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility
October 20, 2023–April 7, 2024
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
www.guggenheim.org
Going Dark presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, thus positioning them at the “edge of visibility”—a formal strategy that the participating artists use to explore tensions in contemporary society. Occupying the Guggenheim Museum’s iconic rotunda, the exhibition includes more than a hundred works by twenty-eight artists, the majority of whom are Black and more than half of whom are women. Work by Ellen Gallagher and Titus Kaphar is included.
Ellen Gallagher, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, 2002 © Ellen Gallagher
Press
Gardner’s ‘Metal of Honor’ show is worth its weight in gold by Murray Whyte
Boston Globe
October 20, 2022
Online
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The Much-Vaunted American Melting Pot, Cracks and All by Jillian Steinhauer
New York Times
January 16, 2022
Online
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At Gagosian, Art That Reverberates Beyond the Gallery Walls by Holland Cotter
New York Times
August 5, 2021
Online
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New Gagosian Director Spotlights Black Artists Involved in Social Change by Robin Pogrebin
New York Times
June 23, 2021
Online
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In “Social Works,” Antwaun Sargent’s First Show at Gagosian, Black Artists Explore the Poetics of Space by Marley Marius
Vogue
June 23, 2021
Online
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At Gagosian, Art That Does “More Than Just Quietly Sit on a Wall” by Cody Delistraty
WSJ Magazine
May 28, 2021
Online
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Artist Titus Kaphar Is Creating a New Artistic Canon by Tina Reid
WSJ Magazine
November 15, 2020
Online
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Watch the 2020 WSJ Magazine Innovator Awards: Celebrating BTS, Jennifer Lopez, Tyler Perry and Others by Lane Florsheim
WSJ Magazine
November 11, 2020
Online
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Parenting While Black: Titus Kaphar’s Starkly Powerful Works by Roberta Smith
New York Times
October 16, 2020
Online
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Gagosian Goes Netflix? The Mega-Gallery Is Creating Original Content That Pairs Artists With Luminaries Like Malcolm Gladwell and Jeff Tweedy by Sarah Cascone
Artnet
October 5, 2020
Online
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Tituus Kaphar, Artist of the Times, Paints With Eyes Open by Jacoba Urist
Cultured
September 23, 2020
Online
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‘It’s Not a Side Project, It’s Part of My Practice’: Artist Titus Kaphar Is Expanding His New Haven Nonprofit—With a Big Boost From Gagosian by Nate Freeman
Artnet
August 10, 2020
Online
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