Kehinde Wiley, Stephen Friedman Gallery

Just as some films are best seen on a big screen or not at all, there are painters whose work bursts into another life when seen up close. 

From October 15, the Stephen Friedman Gallery presents the first ever UK solo exhibition of New York portrait artist Kehinde Wiley, and his latest body of work – The World Stage: Jamaica.

Wiley’s bold, gaudy portraits of young black men, most of whom he picks off the street to paint, have made waves in numerous exhibitions across Europe and the US, and are instantly recognisable from the postures of the sitters alone. Focussing here on subjects Wiley encountered in the underground dance-halls of Negril Beach, Jamaica, and the streets of down town Kingston, Wiley casts his subjects in compositions borrowed from such famous 16th and 17th century portraits as Jacques-Louis David’s iconic Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800). For Wiley, this is an act of reclamation of the black subject, and an examination of the colonial power-structures that inform the originals.

We particularly love Portrait of a Venetian Ambassador (2006), in which Wiley’s subject poses defiantly in front of an ornate, colour-drenched print background - in what looks like a mash-up of the G Unit and William Morris. But this is no mere wallpaper. The blossoms, vines and tendrils of Wiley’s backgrounds stretch forward into three dimensions, framing and enveloping the subjects at the same time, in an exquisite fusion of young Jamaican urbanism and old-world visual aesthetics.

The Stephen Friedman is at 25 – 28 Old Burlington Street, just above the Royal Academy, and in March played host to the fantastic Yinka Shonibare show  Pop! (the one with the headless banqueters). It’s one of central London’s smaller spaces, but you get an all you an all-you-need-to-know introduction to Wiley besides the cream of his latest work. A visit here is the ideal complement to a day at the RA or National Gallery.

FREE 

Address and Map:  25-28 Old Burlington St, W1S 3AN  

Nearest Tube: Picadilly Circus, Oxford Circus