ART CITIES:N.York-Tariku Shiferaw

Tariku Shiferaw is known for his practice of mark-making that explores the metaphysical ideas of painting and societal structures. This formal language of geometric abstraction is executed through densely layering material to create “marks,” gestures that interrogate space-making and reference the hierarchy of systems. As the artist explains, “A mark, as physical and present as cave-markings… reveals the thinker behind the gesture—an evidence of prior markings of ideas and self onto the space”.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Lelong & Co. Archive

Tariku Shiferaw in his solo exhibition “It’s a love thang, it’s a joy thang” presents new works from his ongoing series of paintings “One of These Black Boys” which the artist began working on a larger scale in the past year. Titled after songs from musical genres by artists of the African diaspora such as Hip-hop, R&B, Reggae, Afrobeats, Blues, and Jazz, the paintings reiterate the artists’ stage names and song titles. Both stretched on canvas and draped from the wall, the paintings intentionally hold space for the Black bodies and cultures they represent. For Shiferaw, working in abstraction entails a re-envisioning of identity and form, the gestural surface in his paintings and mark-making is his reclamation of a space that was denied to many artists. A new site-specific installation “Jarusalema (Master KG)” (2021) embodies both the artist’s lived experience of Black joy and his childhood in Los Angeles, California, creating an environment where reality and fantasy exist on the same plain. A live palm tree in the middle centers the visitor’s attention, an immediate place-maker reminiscent of Shiferaw’s time spent in the neighborhoods of L.A. and a nod to how palm trees are often used to demarcate spaces of relaxation. Apart from paint on canvases, Shiferaw also incorporates ready-made objects and materials in his installations, often using transparent and colored mylar, and subverting their utilitarian characteristics in assembly or hanging to create a body of evocative works that question perception and space. Reflective mylar sheeting and chain-link fencing covers one wall, intimating a version of the visitor’s presence and body into view that is separated by the fence. On the other wall, small wooden objects are installed against a panel of pink paint; recalling the artist’s early use and subversion of utilitarian shipping pallets to make art. Toi Derricotte’s poem, “Joy is an act of resistance” is printed in a small font, inviting a closer look. She asks, “What does her love have to do with five hundred years of sorrow, then joy coming up like a small breath, a bubble? What does it have to do with the graveyards of the Atlantic, in her mother’s heart?” Derricotte is not alone in embodying Black joy in her practice, its ethos is rooted in a blues-based tradition and has been expressed by creatives across multiple periods and media, from Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou, to the musicians Shiferaw names his works after, including Solange and Kendrick Lamar. A highlight of the exhibition, “A Boy Is A Gun (Tyler the Creator)” (2020) comprises blue paint applied directly to the gallery wall in a rectangular form, with 12 black wooden objects that echo pallets installed on the surface. Previously exhibited at the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, the semi-permanence of the paint in the museum and present gallery environment adds another layer to the work that speaks to its realization through another body, removed from the artist’s hand.

Photo: Tariku Shiferaw, Cranes in the Sky (Solange) [detail], 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 60 inches (182.9 x 152.4 cm), © Tariku Shiferaw, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong & Co.

Info: Galerie Lelong & Co., 528 West 26th Street, New York, Duration: 1/4-15/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.galerielelong.com