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Artist Spotlight

Titus Kaphar

May 6–12, 2020

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.

Created in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the Artist Spotlight series highlights individual artists, one week at a time, whose exhibitions have been affected by the health crisis. A single artwork by the artist is made available with pricing information for forty-eight hours only.

Artist Spotlight: Titus Kaphar features a new work directly from the artist’s studio. For more information, please contact the gallery at collecting@gagosian.com.

Titus Kaphar in his studio with his painting The Aftermath (2020), New Haven, Connecticut, 2020. Artwork © Titus Kaphar. Photo: John Lucas

Titus Kaphar in his studio with his painting The Aftermath (2020), New Haven, Connecticut, 2020. Artwork © Titus Kaphar. Photo: John Lucas

Titus Kaphar in his studio, painting

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, Father and Son, 2010, oil on canvas, 59 ⅞ × 48 inches (152 × 122 cm). Photo: Jon Lam Photography, courtesy Friedman Benda

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.

The artist Titus Kaphar giving a TED talk

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.

Detail of Lauren Halsey sculpture depicting praying hands, planets, and other symbol against red and green background

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 both wearing large headphones and tee-shirts on a film set

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, 169 Henry Street, New Haven, Connecticut. Photo: John Dennis

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.

Related News

Still from Shut Up and Paint (2022), directed by Titus Kaphar and Alex Mallis

Screening and Talk

Titus Kaphar
Derek Cianfrance

Friday, April 28, 2023, 7pm
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com

Join Titus Kaphar and director Derek Cianfrance 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. The evening will include screenings of Kaphar’s short films Shut Up and Paint, an Oscar-shortlisted work in which he looks to the medium of film in the face of an insatiable art market seeking to silence his activism, and I Hold Your Love, a New Yorker documentary that explores the joys and injustices of Black motherhood. Following the screenings, the pair will speak about their respective practices and work, including Cianfrance’s 2010 film Blue Valentine, which also features in the program.

Purchase Tickets

Still from Shut Up and Paint (2022), directed by Titus Kaphar and Alex Mallis

Still from Do the Right Thing (1989), directed by Spike Lee

Screening

Titus Kaphar Selects

April 28–May 11, 2023
Metrograph, New York
metrograph.com

Titus Kaphar has curated a selection of films as part of a series copresented by Gagosian and Metrograph. The program features seven films that have each served to validate feelings of joy, pain, fear, or sorrow for the artist, as well as two short films that he directed.

Kaphar explains, “Film is a uniquely powerful medium. Its ability to tap into our emotions is unlike anything else for me. This is not a top ten list. This is a decidedly subjective selection of films that, through their vulnerability and specificity, have made me feel less alone.”

Featured films include
The Babadook
Blue Valentine
Boyz n the Hood
Do the Right Thing
Drive My Car
I Hold Your Love
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Moonlight
Shut Up and Paint

Still from Do the Right Thing (1989), directed by Spike Lee

Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts signing copies of their book Redaction at the Gagosian Shop, New York, 2023. Photo: Mauricio Zelaya

Reading and Book Signing

Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts
Redaction

Wednesday, March 22, 2023, 6–7pm
Gagosian Shop, New York

In celebration of their new book, Redaction, Titus Kaphar and memoirist, poet, and attorney Reginald Dwayne Betts will sign copies, following a poetry reading by Betts. The volume documents the pair’s Redaction series, first presented in 2019 at MoMA PS1, New York. Bringing together poetry by Betts that draws upon redacted legal documents and Kaphar’s etched portraits of incarcerated individuals, the project exposes the ways in which the legal system exploits and erases the poor and incarcerated from public consciousness. Redaction was designed in close collaboration with Kaphar and Betts and also includes an introduction by Sarah Suzuki, associate director at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, the book will be available for purchase at the event.

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Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts signing copies of their book Redaction at the Gagosian Shop, New York, 2023. Photo: Mauricio Zelaya

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Museum Exhibitions

Ellen Gallagher, Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop, 2002 © Ellen Gallagher

On View

Going Dark
The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility

Through 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

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Father Stretch My Hands, 2021 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Photo: Rob McKeever

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

Derrick Adams, Woman in Grayscale (Alicia), 2017 © Derrick Adams Studio

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

Sally Mann, Deep South, Untitled (Emmett Till River Bank), 1998 © Sally Mann

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

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