Roberts Projects is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by painter Amoako Boafo. Representing individuals from the surrounding countries of his native Ghana, Boafo attributes to his portraits a natural grace, poise and elegance. Artists who are able to achieve this palpable sense of tenderness within the scope of their working process are few and far between, yet Boafo does exactly this, communicating both warmth and vulnerability in his intimate portrayals of what he terms the "Black Diaspora."

As with other contemporary portrait artists, including Alice Neel, Jordan Casteel, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Noah Davis, Boafo attempts to create a new vernacular, reframing his own experience and that of his subjects to include a more variegated understanding of the Black Experience.

Considering the sociopolitical landscape of the past two years, coupled with how racism is alive and well in the world, adds yet another level of complexity and relevance to Boafo's project. Giving credence to this is the idea of a diaspora, of being uprooted and displaced again and again not within the context of a life "well lived," but in the context of abuse, bigotry and racism, is the engine that drives these  enigmatic paintings. Boafo seeks less to diagnose a problem, and more to initiate a human connection whereby we as viewers might arrive at our own perceptions, coming to these images with fresh eyes.  

There is also the distant echo of Egon Schiele here and portraits such as Tonica Hunter (2017) bring to mind Schiele's spare and brutal lines, the background, shifting and dystopic, while the central figure, hides her face behind a raised hand, revealing only her eyes that gaze out into an uncharted world ahead. As with Schiele, Boafo suggests a deep and unbridled power, one we can only access as viewers through the figure's fiercely penetrating gaze. There is also the suggestion of violence within the painterly gestures, and one is reminded of the monumental works of Leon Golub, whose Mercenaries series made in the mid 1970s, blurred the boundaries between oppressed and oppressor. As with Golub, the bodies of Boafo's figures appear to be in motion, or at the very least not content to sit still. His thick impasto application of paint creates the illusion of movement and deep shadows, but it is his gestural lines within the paint that suggest an emotional resonance, a fractured expanse within our human experience.

Amoako Boafo was born in Accra, Ghana, and is currently based in Vienna, Austria.