Culver, Los Angeles
Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe
One But Two (Haadzii)
Roberts ProjectsTo make an appointment, please visit: bit.ly/3ccAbJ6 Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe’s second solo show with the gallery opens with a presentation of new works continuing his idiosyncratic perspective on Diasporic culture through the celebrated form of Black portraiture. This exhibition follows Black Like Me, the gallery’s inaugural presentation with the artist and his first solo gallery exhibition in the United States, which took place January 2020. The son of a twin, Quaicoe takes on the subject of dualistic representation and double portraiture in twelve new large-scale paintings and diptychs. Depicting both male and female pairings, his subjects are outwardly identical in appearance and placed within casual domestic settings. Quaicoe's paintings are unapologetically lush, rendered thickly with accents of bright reds, oranges and blues. The backgrounds continue his recognizable stylistic treatment of paint, whereas the sheer physicality of Quaicoe's hand lends itself to more immediate readings of the potency of the painting's visual impact. Drawing inspiration from the tradition of African tattoos, Quaicoe transmits on his subjects' bodies the echoes of memories by directly carving into the paint, drawing onto their faces, arms and legs. These markings—a technique newly introduced by the artist—embrace each curvature and line of the body, and can appear almost as preparatory sketches transposed on the surface of the paint. Exquisitely placed fabric appliqués highlight important details of each subject. Across this body of work, Quaicoe's visual vocabulary celebrates both materials and cultural influences to create an homage to the rich history of Black portraiture. "Haadzii," the Ga [1] word interpreted loosely as "twin-born," emphasizes the harmonization of humanity, specifically the innate link between the corporeal and the spiritual, that resides within one body. This duality of self-experienced in the Ga religion is outlined by Marion Kilson in her research into the phenomenon of twin births, where she states that the "soul (susuma) inhabits the body (gbọmọ tśo) except during sleep, when it leaves the body and travels about without being limited by time or space." [2] Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe was born in Greater Accra Region, Ghana. He attended the Ghanatta College of Art & Design for Fine Art, with a focus on painting. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Recent museum acquisitions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR and the Fogg Museum at Harvard, Cambridge, MA. Recent exhibitions include Life in Flowers, Luce Gallery, Turin, Italy; Salon de Peinture, Almine Rech, New York, NY; Friend Zone, Half Gallery, New York, NY; Black Voices / Black Microcosm, Cfhill Art Space, Stockholm, Sweden and Xenia: Crossroads in Portrait Painting, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY. Upcoming institutional exhibitions include participation in The Show Will Go On at Nassima Landau, Tel-Aviv, Israel, and the artist’s debut at the Rubell Museum in Winter 2021, which follows his Spring residency with the institution. 1 - Ga (Gã) is a member of the Kwa branch of Niger-Congo languages, and is spoken in Ghana, in and around the capital Accra, and in the south of Togo. 2 - Kilson, Marion. Kpele Lala: Ga Religious Songs and Symbols, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.