Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel Opens at The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum will present Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel, from March 9 through July 29, 2012. A new acquisition by the contemporary American artist Kehinde Wiley (born 1977, Los Angeles) served as impetus for the exhibition. The painting, Alios Itzhak (2011), is a nine-foot tall portrait of a young Jewish Ethiopian-Israeli man surrounded by an intricate decorative background inspired by a traditional Jewish papercut in the Museum's collection. This work was acquired in honor of The Jewish Museum's recently retired director Joan Rosenbaum. The exhibition features 14 large-scale paintings from Kehinde Wiley's new World Stage: Israel series. The vibrant portraits of Israeli youths from diverse ethnic and religious affiliations are each embedded in a unique background influenced by Jewish ritual art. Also included are 10 works of Jewish ceremonial papercuts and large textiles chosen by the artist from The Jewish Museum's collection. All of the 14 paintings on view are being displayed in New York for the first time.

The artist-designed and hand carved wooden frames created for The World Stage: Israel paintings combine imagery of the Hands of Kohen (the blessing hands of a Kohen - a descendant of the high priest, Aaron) and the Lion of Judah (symbolizing power and majesty and often represented in symmetrical, confronting pairs of lions) each supporting a text in Hebrew. For Wiley's Jewish subjects the text shown is the Ten Commandments; for his Arab Israeli subjects, the plea of Rodney King, victim of a 1991 police beating in Los Angeles that sparked race riots, "Can we all get along?"

Kehinde Wiley, Alios Itzhak (The World Stage: Israel), 2011. The Jewish Museum. Purchase: Gift of Lisa and Steven Tananbaum Family Foundation. © Kehinde Wiley. Courtesy Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA.

Wiley says his appropriated decorative backgrounds serve as catalysts for his paintings. The paintings represent a unique fusion of the orthodox with the secular and European traditions with those of North Africa and the Middle East. Roughly two-thirds of the portraits in the Israel series are of Ethiopian Jews, others are of Ashkenazi Jews and Arab Israelis. The artist is driven by an ongoing exploration of globalization, diasporas, cultural hybridity, and power. Saying he knows what it feels like to exist on the periphery, Wiley likes to catapult often powerless, anonymous young men of color onto enormous canvases and into the visual language of the powerful. The large size of the paintings reflects Wiley's observation that scale has been used as a measure of historical importance throughout art history.

One of the most significant young artists working today, Kehinde Wiley is originally from Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Beijing, Dakar and New York. A gifted painter, he takes everyday people and paints them often larger than life-size in the grand poses of nobles, saints and colonial rulers from classical European portraiture. While the body language is borrowed from the past, the clothes are current and often hip-hop in style. The idea is to endow status on his young, urban subjects from carefully chosen spots around the globe. Rich tapestries of color and pattern form the bright and ornate backgrounds from which the young men posture. Patterns are found in the decorative traditions of each culture Wiley has chosen for his World Stage series. The fifth in the series, Israel, is close to completion with 14 of the 18 paintings in the set on view in The Jewish Museum's exhibition. Prior sites for Wiley's ambitious series have been China, Africa, Brazil and India. To find his subjects - almost always young, black and male - he goes to places the hip and young hang out.

For The World Stage: Israel, Wiley scouted in discos, malls, bars and sporting venues in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in 2010. He formally poses the young men and photographs them. The result forms the basis for his paintings. A nine-minute video in the exhibition shows Wiley in marketplaces, homes and public arenas of Israel's two largest cities finding the faces and figures that will become his subjects.

Kehinde Wiley was born in Los Angeles, received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1999, and a MFA from Yale University in 2001. His paintings are in the collections of over forty museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hammer Museum; High Museum; Walker Art Center; Brooklyn Museum; and The Jewish Museum, New York, to name a few. Selected exhibitions include The National Portrait Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and Columbus Museum of Art, among others. His work has been the subject of eight monographs to date, with a forthcoming Rizzoli publication scheduled for release in March.

Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel has been organized by Karen Levitov, Associate Curator at The Jewish Museum. A 64-page catalogue is being published by Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, California. The hardcover book contains 40 color images and essays by Claudia J. Nahson, Ruth Eglash, and Shalva Weil, Ph.D. It fully illustrates Wiley's new portraits from The World Stage: Israel. The catalogue will be available at The Jewish Museum's Cooper Shop for $ 40.00.

On Thursday, March 15 at 6:30 pm, The Jewish Museum will present Kehinde Wiley in conversation about The World Stage: Israel series with Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Tickets for this program are $15 for the general public; $12 for students and 65+; and $10 for Jewish Museum members and can be ordered from www.TheJewishMuseum.org/Calendar or by calling 212.423.3337.

Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel is supported, in part, by the Melva Bucksbaum Fund for Contemporary Art and the Barbara S. Horowitz Contemporary Art Fund.

About The Jewish Museum
Widely admired for its exhibitions and collections that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring the intersection of art and Jewish culture from ancient to modern times. The Jewish Museum organizes a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed and award-winning temporary exhibitions as well as broad-based programs for families, adults, and school groups. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, a collection of 26,000 objects is maintained - paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media. The collection is among the three largest of its kind in the world and is distinguished by its breadth and quality. It is showcased in the vibrant, two-floor permanent exhibition, Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, examining the Jewish experience as it has evolved from antiquity to the present.

General Information
The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City. Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members. Admission is free on Saturdays. For information on The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3200 or visit the website at TheJewishMuseum.org .

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