Hang-Up Gallery

Kehinde Wiley is a contemporary African-American painter known for his distinctive portraits. His subjects are often young black men and women, rendered in a Photorealist style against densely patterned backgrounds. Wiley melds references from many sources, including Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte, Islamic architecture, and hip hop culture. “I believe it’s possible to hold twin desires in your head, such as the desire to create painting and destroy painting at once,” the artist has explained. “The desire to look at a black American culture as underserved, in need of representation, a desire to mine that said culture and to lay its parts bare, and look at it almost clinically.&rdquo...