The Is of It, featuring New York-based artist Ludovic Nkoth opened at François Ghebaly (downtown Los Angeles gallery). An opening art party was held on October 7, 2023. You still have time to catch the exhibition as it runs through November 11, 2023.
Ludovic Nkoth at François Ghebaly
In his newest exhibition, The Is of It, Nkoth reflects on concepts of “home,” as a physical place. The artist sees it as a fleeting, ever-evolving idea, a moving image in the mind’s eye. Similarly evasive concepts––family, belonging, identity have long been mainstays in the artist’s visual imaginary. Utilizing brightly hued, sensually impastoed figures and lived experiences that comprise his own identity synthesis. “Is home a place or a feeling?” asks Nkoth. “And how do we hold onto moments? A moment in its conception becomes always already in the past. How do we grasp, let alone memorialize moments?”
Ludovic Nkoth, Views from within, 2023 (detail)
Nearly all were produced during a year-long residency at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Many reflect time Nkoth spent in the Montmartre’s Château Rouge neighborhood, home to multigenerational communities of West African expatriates. Some with whom Nkoth broke bread and shared stories of leaving what once was home to build new identities and spaces. “Their sense of home is fluid, whether they choose so or not.”
The Artworks
Nkoth’s more classically styled portraits are prominent in the exhibition. The work How to surprise a mirror (2023) shows a young girl in an orange dress and white collar standing before a mirror. There is a jardiniere on a table and a small black cat frame her either side.
At the center of the painting, the reflection of her right arm is doubled as though shifting in focus. This demarcates her movement before the mirror in almost ghostly real time. Elsewhere, in works like “Views from within” (2023) and “Soliloquy” (2023), Nkoth expands the face and figure of his sitter to encompass nearly the entire canvas.
Elsewhere, in works like “Views from within” (2023) and “Soliloquy” (2023), Nkoth expands the face and figure of his sitter to encompass nearly the entire canvas. This also conveys the fullness of depictions as personal as well as intimate as these, yet at the same time holding to a tangible sense of reticence. This perhaps is a cue to the ineffability of life experience, personal histories kept close. “When we sit with paintings a little longer we’re able to look at them as mirrors, and use our own past experiences to reach toward a higher understanding of what’s in front of us.” For Nkoth, these higher understandings, the most profound essences of fiction and storytelling, are ready at hand in our lived realities.
On view: October 7 – November 11, 2023
What: Ludovic Nkoth
Where: François Ghebaly, 2245 E. Washington Blvd, LA
When: Running through November 11, 2023
Website: http://ghebaly.com
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