The Denver Art Museum is charging visitors extra to see its new exhibition of paintings by Ghanian artist Amoako Boafo, and that came as something of a surprise at the box office last week.
Those admission price add-ons are usually saved for blockbuster shows built around artists most people know and love already. (DAM actually has one on display now in the form of “All Stars,” a traveling blow-out featuring names like Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacob Lawrence and Jackson Pollock.)
Retrospectives of work by living and lesser-known artists are nearly always included with the regular ticket, and that newcomer description still fits Boafo, who is just 39, and who has had limited exposure to U.S. audiences. With so much to see at DAM already, and with admission costs already steep, visitors will be reluctant to take a risk.
But I encourage paying a bit more to see this offering. Boafo is a unique talent and a rising star in the international art scene. The exhibition, titled “Soul of Black Folks,” is a terrific introduction to his work.
The exhibition, curated by Larry Ossei-Mensa and now making the rounds of regional museums, has more than 30 paintings (mostly oils on canvas or paper) and they are all in his signature style of portrait-making. They are handsomely, and leisurely, arranged on the first floor of DAM’s Hamilton Building, with a soundtrack of upbeat pop songs, curated by the artist himself, providing the viewing experience with a solid momentum.
Portraits, of course, are old news in the painting world, and Boafo fits snugly into the tradition — in some ways. His subjects pose for him, patiently and with vulnerability, and he has them gaze directly back at him in a way that captures their personalities while engaging viewers in deep conversations. Looking at Boafo’s pictures is something of a staring contest with the people in them.
The subjects are of-the-moment — men, women, pairs, several self-portraits — but the show has a timeless feel. Boafo is sometimes put in a class with contemporaries such as Kerry James Marshall and Jordan Casteel, two other Black painters who are popular with collectors and critics in the current age, and he does, like those artists, often paint Black subjects.
But it is just as easy to frame him as an heir to the influences of European heroes past, such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Like those old-school stars, he is heavy into silhouettes, disappearing backgrounds and very conscious choices in the personal details that he paints into his work. He might play up a certain article of clothing or an accessory or a pet as a way of making those items appear crucial to the identity of his subjects.
At times, he makes those details central to the viewing experience. Take, for example, the painting “Green Clutch,” which depicts an adult female figure seated on a chair. She is dressed in a bright green botanical-print top and with her hand at her chin. She appears confident and comfortable and invites us to meet her eye-to-eye.
But because Boafo titles his painting as he does, he forces us to give extra consideration to the small handbag that sits at her hip. The purse is just a split second in a work that is full of motion, but the artist wants us to see how the things we carry or wear are crucial to our identities.
Similar considerations are raised by the painting “Red Collar,” which points us to a very small detail in a portrait of a couple holding a dog. A viewer would naturally focus on the human faces in this work, or on the brightly colored blue-and-red striped dress one of the people is wearing, and which Boafo renders in bright hues. But the title suggests we need to focus on the dog if we really want to understand their essence. It is rare to see titles used with such power in contemporary artworks.
Boafo’s paintings are also notable for the way he depicts skin color. In public discourse, his subjects are often reduced to easy descriptions. We tend to say these people are Black or Brown.
But Boafo isn’t content with such simplicity. His Black and Brown people have traces of reds, grays, yellows and other colors in their flesh. In the piece “Umber Brown Belt,” which depicts a woman dressed in a flower-patterned blouse and black shorts (and, yes, an umber-colored belt), there are all of those shades in her face, plus a distinct blue around her mouth, eye and forehead.
What does he want us to see? Again, you can look at his titles, though this time at the title of the overall exhibition, which is drawn from an essay by civil rights activist and social scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk,” which was published in 1903.
In the work, Du Bois discussed the idea of “double consciousness” or, as the exhibition text points out, the experience of Black people feeling a need to see themselves through their own eyes and, simultaneously, through the eyes of white people around them.
With these images, Boafo invites viewers to see them on their their own terms. The portraits are direct, the subjects are empowered organically to simply be themselves. They control, as much as possible, how they are viewed by all.
In that way, the pictures are simple and complex at the same time. And, it needs to be said, they are endlessly compelling, tactile, colorful, exaggerated, light-hearted, open and, in their way, super serious. They are also commercial works. No surprise that Boafo is represented by New York’s legendary Gagosian gallery.
The pieces are relatable in a way that many portraits are not. Boafo employs numerous techniques in his work, oil paint and paper transfer. Sometimes he works on canvas and sometimes directly on paper. He uses a brush, but most prominently he uses his fingers, and you can see the width and trails of them in the paintings. His objects feel hand-made and human — because that is how they are created.
IF YOU GO
Amoako Boafo, “Soul of Black Folks”: continues through Feb 19 at the Denver Art Museum. Info: 720-865-5000 or denverartmuseum.org.
Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.
