Artist Spotlight
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.
#GagosianSpotlight
Titus Kaphar in his studio with his painting The Aftermath (2020), New Haven, Connecticut, 2020. Artwork © Titus Kaphar. Photo: John Lucas
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.
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.
Related Exhibitions
Related News
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 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.
Still from Shut Up and Paint (2022), directed by Titus Kaphar and Alex Mallis
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
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