Artist: Ofili, Chris

Chris Ofili has frequently been viewed as the maverick amongst black British artists, having taken up the stereotype of black man/woman and running with it as a kind of leitmotif. At the same time Ofili explores the complexities of power, exploitation, religion and spirituality with particular, but by no means exclusive, reference to the black experience and with deeply sophisticated irony. His earlier canvases suggested an interest in Art Deco, Aubrey Beardsly, Paul Klee and Scottie Wilson and, as Stuart Hall noted with reference to more recent work, ‘his knowledge of European painting is extraordinarily wide and sophisticatedly unpredictable…’. Ofili’s taste for appropriating visual culture from not only Europe and America, but also from Africa, on his own terms, also characterizes his Blue Rider Extended Remix project, seen in 2006 in Hanover. Here ‘Blue’ and ‘Blueness’ derived from Picasso, Jazz, Symbolism, German Expressionism and Blue Humor inform with the same sophisticated irony, while taking off in a direction which has very much to do with moving the trajectories of aesthetics and art history.