PUTTING ON THE SKY
Eternal Sea, 2023, Blueprint painting on linen, 20" x 16"
Ivan Forde
PUTTING ON THE SKY
Curated by Dexter Wimberly
11/17 - 12/20/2023
KOKI ARTS is pleased to present PUTTING ON THE SKY, the Guyana born/Harlem based artist Ivan Forde’s debut solo exhibition in Tokyo of a new suite of “blueprint paintings.”
Recognized for innovations in the cyanotype process on epic scales, Forde’s practice is primarily concerned with poetic symbols, and how they change, or stay the same, in different contexts. The works on view coalesce into a multi-sensory environment spanning alternative process photography, printmaking, scent, sound and video performance, and wearable sculptures. Drawing inspiration from depictions of the seascape in visual art such as Ashley Brian’s collages of Langston Hughes poetry, Romare Bearden watercolors and Chris Ofili’s oil paintings of Homer’s Odyssey, Botticelli's and Rauchenberg’s Dante drawings, William Blake’s mezzotints of Paradise Lost, Hokusai and Kuniyoshi woodblock prints depicting the ocean; and visiting Giotto’s Scrovegni chapel in Padua, the suite of paintings demonstrate Ivan Forde’s maturing practice that is steeped in the long tradition of artists making work informed by their engagement with poetic texts.
Ivan Forde has produced cyanotype based works for close to a decade and has influenced contemporary approaches to the early photographic process through painting and collage. Forde uses the process of an underpainting to explore the poetics of the surface and texture of the ocean in this group of seascape paintings. He uses bright fluorescent colors on raw linen, building up dimensional fields and abstracted gestures. The underpainting is then covered with ultra-thin Kozo (mulberry) paper that has been emulsified with cyanotype solution exposed to sunlight and washed out with water to fix the image. The translucent Kozo on linen allows viewers to see through to the bright colors beneath only while looking head-on at the artwork, while from a side view the vibrant colors disappear leaving only the blue visible. In this way, Forde is making statements on the effect of light and color under direct and peripheral vision, questioning whether we see things more clearly through direct gaze or from the corner of our eyes. Metaphorically, he relates these concepts to epic poems and histories that are in the center or on the margins, and exploring what happens to our understanding of identity when we view peripheral histories from a central point of view, and centered histories through peripheral vision.
IVAN FORDE (b.1990) received his BA in literature from SUNY Purchase in 2012, and his MFA in printmaking from Columbia University in 2018. He participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program (ISP) from 2021-2022. Forde lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Syracuse University Art Museum (Syracuse, 2021-2022), and Visitor Welcome Center (Los Angeles, 2019), and group shows at National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington DC, 2023), Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University (New York, 2023), Artists Space (New York, 2022), Green Naftali (New York, 2021), Ingrid Deuss Gallery (Antwerp, 2021), Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, 2020), and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, 2019). Recent performances were held at Artists Space (New York, 2022), the Museum of the City of New York (New York, 2018), New Museum (New York, 2018), and Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University (New York, 2018). Forde's work has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Brooklyn Rail, Artforum, Artnet, and Hyperallergic among others.