I had an amazing instructor, Joseph Gotto , who, as a painter, spoke to me as it - he didn't condescend. Kehinde Wiley More Quotes by Kehinde Wiley More Quotes From Kehinde Wiley What's interesting about my project recently is that I'm going out into broader global spaces but then isolating at the same time - sort of pushing out but then pulling in. Kehinde Wiley going-out space interesting At the same time I really enjoy painting flesh. Kehinde Wiley painting enjoy flesh The expectations of the viewer are what you're asking about. And the expectations of the viewer are manifold. However, they are very fixed, given who I am in the world. People have certain expectations of me as an artist. Kehinde Wiley who-i-am artist people For example, in one of my last exhibitions I had a 50-foot massive painting with I think perhaps a hundred thousand hand-painted small flowers. This was the Christ painting [The Dead Christ in the Tomb, 2008] in my Down exhibition [2008]. Now, I simply can't spend eight hours a day painting small, identical flowers. And so I've got a team that allows me to have these grand, sweeping statements. Kehinde Wiley team flower thinking I use those expectations as a color on my palette, a certain temperature in the room. You can use those expectations for the great punchline, but also for a great painting, in society. Kehinde Wiley color use expectations I think that the Kehinde Wiley brand is something that I'm working towards expanding and to inclusion. Kehinde Wiley inclusion expanding thinking If I have the same plan to go into the streets, find random strangers, use art-historical referent from their - from the specific location, to use decorative patterns from this location, that's a rule. That's a set of patterns that you can apply to all societies. But what gives rise or what comes out of each experiment is so radically different. Kehinde Wiley historical giving art What it is is a type of editorialization, you know? This is self-portraiture. This is what you think about the world we live in. Kehinde Wiley portraiture self thinking I love being able to have a team. Kehinde Wiley able team love-is I love the flexibility of saying, "Today we're making 50-foot paintings, and we're going to have to join hands and figure out how that's going to work." But in the end, it's a possibility. Kehinde Wiley feet today hands For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence. Kehinde Wiley selfishness driven type You'll find that street casting in America is a lot different than street casting in different nations. Kehinde Wiley casting different america Most people say, "Hell, no. I don't know who you are. This scares me. Like, I'm not interested in this."Another way of looking at these paintings is, these are the guys who said yes. Kehinde Wiley scare guy people A realization and a dissection of the canon gave rise to the work. But there's also a sneaking suspicion of the canon. Kehinde Wiley dissection canon realization When the fat lady comes out to sing, we don't know how she feels that day. We don't know if she's suffering from a cold or is mourning a death or falling in love. We don't know. But so all of that chance is the performance. Kehinde Wiley mourning falling-in-love suffering Usually I bring very attractive women with me to excite interest. I mean, it's a type of, like, strangers-with-candy situation. Kehinde Wiley attractive stranger mean I think it's really useful to create parameters. The term you use can be forwarded into something more like a grid, a rubric, a system that you apply to all environments, and in so doing you create a situation in which you can locate local color, local differences within new environments. Kehinde Wiley differences color thinking There's a team of filmmakers who follow me in the streets when I'm finding these models, to give me a sense of legitimacy to a casual stranger. This is New York City. No one's going to follow you back to your studio. Kehinde Wiley team cities new-york [My twin brother] he was the star artist of the family as we - as we were growing up. He eventually lost interest and went more towards literature and then medicine and then business and so on. But for me it became something that I did well. And it felt great being able to make something look like something. Kehinde Wiley growing-up stars brother Whereas I remember being in Dakar, in Senegal, where I have my third studio, and street casting, and I remember looking at the faces of the young men that we were speaking to through translators and so on, showing them the books. Complete - completely different response. Kehinde Wiley faces men book
