I create something that means something to me, to the world, and try to do my best. I can't fix everything. Kehinde Wiley More Quotes by Kehinde Wiley More Quotes From Kehinde Wiley I think that at its best, painting can be an act of juggling perceptions, a hall of mirrors. And it can be a bit confusing and scattering. But as the artist, as the man behind the velvet rope who controls the smoke and the mirrors and the way that things move in the painted space, what I want to do is to try my best to be a good witness. Kehinde Wiley artist men moving I love the of dealing with the homoerotic versus the idea of dealing with certain tropes with regards to black masculinity in the world, propensity towards sports, antisocial behavior, hypersexuality - all of these sort of non-truths that I don't exist in but that I see as being fixed in the world's imagination. Kehinde Wiley imagination sports ideas I'm fully capable of multitasking certain conceptual concerns within the work. Kehinde Wiley multitasking concern certain I love the idea of engaging religious sentiment and how that vocabulary has evolved over time. Kehinde Wiley vocabulary religious ideas It never really understood its own situational luxury. And I think that by and large the privilege of being Kehinde Wiley in the 21st century, making these high-priced luxury goods, traveling the world, pointing at these people, behooves me to have a point of view and to say something about it. Kehinde Wiley luxury views thinking So much of the hubris that surrounded conceptual art in the 1950s through '70s was that it had this arrogant presupposition that pointing in and of itself was a creative act. It never rigorously politically and socially analyzed the fact that the luxury to point is something that so many people throughout the world don't have. Kehinde Wiley luxury people art You know, the process, I think, is the story. And it goes back, again, to what I said about chance and about radical contingency, the idea that all of this is this well-oiled machine that's been reared up and, like, really articulated and thought about. Kehinde Wiley machines ideas thinking There are just so many different types of people that come into my studio, and secondarily, there's the idea of ideation, like, "Who are you and what do you see in yourself in this other person?" So many different people that you would see so many different things. Kehinde Wiley different people ideas Like commercial stuff is sort of cheap and disposable and fun and can be sort of interesting in many ways. I love being in popular culture and existing in the evolution of popular culture. But it's so different from painting, and it's so different from that sort of slow, contemplative, gradual process that painting is. Kehinde Wiley fun love-is interesting There's something really cool about being able to fly to South Africa and watch one of the most talented African footballers wearing a shoe on the field. Kehinde Wiley shoes able watches There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe. Kehinde Wiley purity believe art It felt really radically uncomfortable. And I was really not sure at first about releasing that body of work. But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought that that position, that location, is something that's just sort of interesting in its own right, as an experience, as a process. Again, we're talking about this rubric, this set of rules, this grid that I toss on top of different locations globally. This is what came out of Africa. Kehinde Wiley rubrics talking interesting I enjoy Chicago as one of the great American cities. When I come here and take a taxi from the airport, I meet a young man from Somalia. I meet a young man from Eritrea who engages with this nation with a sense of hope and a sense of desire. But we also we know that there are other elements of this nation that are toxic. Kehinde Wiley airports cities men When we talk about Orientalist painting, we're talking about painting generally from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, and some would say even into the twentieth, that allows Europe to look at Africa, Asia Minor, or East Asia in a way that's revelatory but also as a place in which you can empty yourself out. A place in which there is no place. It's an emptiness and a location at once. Kehinde Wiley east europe talking I think that artists provide questions, not answers. We provide provocations rather than fully formed objects. Kehinde Wiley artist answers thinking In the end I'm in love with it [Western European easel painting]. And that's where a lot of the influence from the work comes from. Kehinde Wiley painting influence ends I have a lot of problems with Western European easel painting. Kehinde Wiley western painting problem He [Michael Jackson] would choose specific moments. They were art history books that I prefer. They were paintings that he prefers. It's this dance back and forth. We were halfway through the dance. He died. Kehinde Wiley painting book art In America, there's this type of expectation of just-add-water celebrity, this type of, "Of course you found me; we're all going to be famous for 15 minutes," sort of Paris-Hilton-ization of society. Kehinde Wiley paris water america I pay my models to work with me, so there becomes this weird sort of economic bartering thing, which made me feel really sort of uncomfortable, almost as though you were buying into a situation - which, again, is another way of looking at those paintings. The body language in those paintings is a lot more stiff. Kehinde Wiley buying pay way
