United States, 1982.
Lives and works in Los Angeles.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Mirror Study for Joe
2017
Ed. 5
Archival pigment print
86.36 x 116,84 cm
Mirror Study (2017) Those works are part of “Figures, Grounds and Studies,” Paul Mpagi Sepuya current project which “lays bare an interdependent formal relationship between my gaze, the subject depicted and the viewer’s (or audience’s) presence within a history of eroticized and racialized photographic constructs.” Sepuya extends beyond traditional studio portraits including photographs of photographs, arranging or collaging two-dimensional works with the material around him ; his work tends to be both abstract and representational. By working with his close circle of friends, he establishes the artist’s studio as a place where life and art intersect and let his aura appear, even when he stays behind the camera.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Mirror Study
2017
Ed. 5
Archival pigment print
86.36 x 129,54 cm
Mirror Study (2017) Those works are part of “Figures, Grounds and Studies,” Paul Mpagi Sepuya current project which “lays bare an interdependent formal relationship between my gaze, the subject depicted and the viewer’s (or audience’s) presence within a history of eroticized and racialized photographic constructs.” Sepuya extends beyond traditional studio portraits including photographs of photographs, arranging or collaging two-dimensional works with the material around him ; his work tends to be both abstract and representational. By working with his close circle of friends, he establishes the artist’s studio as a place where life and art intersect and let his aura appear, even when he stays behind the camera.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Mirror Study
2016
Ed. 5
Archival pigment print
86.36 x 129,54 cm
Mirror Study (2017) Those works are part of “Figures, Grounds and Studies,” Paul Mpagi Sepuya current project which “lays bare an interdependent formal relationship between my gaze, the subject depicted and the viewer’s (or audience’s) presence within a history of eroticized and racialized photographic constructs.” Sepuya extends beyond traditional studio portraits including photographs of photographs, arranging or collaging two-dimensional works with the material around him ; his work tends to be both abstract and representational. By working with his close circle of friends, he establishes the artist’s studio as a place where life and art intersect and let his aura appear, even when he stays behind the camera.
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Exhibition View
"Making Appear", Collective show
ALMANAQUE
Feb. 2018
Approximate view with unframed print. Ask for exact available dimensions
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
United States, 1982.
Lives and works in Los Angeles.
A preeminent international contemporary photographer, his work was recently on view at the New Museum’s exhibition “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon” and at MoMA NYC exhibition “Being: New Photography 2018”.
His oeuvre was recently acquired by some of the most important museum’s permanent collections including the Guggenheim, the MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MoCA LA), the Museum of Modern Art Library and Der Fotomuseum Winterthur among others.
Sepuya holds a Master in Fine Arts by UCLA. From 2000 to 2014 he lived in New York where he participated in Artist-in-Residence programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2009 – 2010), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2010) and The Studio Museum in Harlem (2010 – 2011).
Available works:
Mirror Study (2017). About his current project Paul Mpagi Sepuya says “it lays bare an interdependent formal relationship between my gaze, the subject depicted and the viewer’s presence within a history of eroticized and racialized photographic constructs.”
Sepuya extends beyond the traditional studio portraits including photographs of photographs, arranging or collaging two-dimensional works with the material around him. Thus, his work tends to be both abstract and representational.
By working with his close circle of friends, he establishes the artist’s studio as a place where life and art intersect and let his aura appear, even when he stays behind the camera.
«I make photographs and installations rooted in portraiture, homoerotic visual culture and the function of the studio. Portraiture is the foundation of my practice. The subjects appearing in my work are a cast of friends, intimates and muses. They are founded in ongoing relationships mediated by the making and production of photographs.
My working process plays of what Brian O’Doherty calls the –collage of compressed tenses [within] studio time–. It allows me to hold, within the studio, all material as potential. Each enters into the frame of another within a chain of production, revision, destruction and re-production.”
