Galerie Templon is pleased to announce the unveiling of Kehinde Wiley‘s portrait of president Barack Obama for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The portrait was revealed at a private ceremony at the museum on February 12th and joins the Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Wiley’s painting will be permanently installed in the Portrait Gallery’s “America’s Presidents” exhibition on the museum’s second floor.
Born in 1977 in Los Angeles, Kehinde Wiley lives and works in New York. Examining issues of racial and sexual identity, his works create collisions where art history and street culture come face to face. The artist makes eroticised heroes of the invisible, those traditionally banished from representations of power. His work reinterprets the vocabulary of power and prestige, part politically-charged critique, part an avowed fascination with the luxury and bombast of Western symbols of male domination.
For additional information, please visit National Portrait Gallery.
