Khalif Kelly
Brother to Brother, 2009.
About:
In his first museum exhibition, Khalif Kelly presents a new series of paintings based on vignettes from imaginary fairy tale adventures that portray children interacting with an array of weird and wonderful protagonists. With a fresh and vivid palette, a reductive, cartoon-like figurative style with a metallic-like patina reminiscent of video game robots and characters, Kelly creates scenes that on closer inspection reveal a mixture of personal archetypes and classic racial stereotypes.
Confrontation at the Clothesline, 2009.
Steppin Out, 2009.
Ascent to the Big Top, 2009.
The artist’s aesthetic includes references to the figurative work of Jacob Lawrence and to the controversial stop motion animations of George Pal, especially John Henry and the Inky-Poo and the Jasperseries from the 1940s. Like Pal, Kelly utilizes the perception of race as a narrative device, something to work with and work against in the children’s formation of identity through play.
Kelly was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1980 and grew up in Arlington, Texas. He received his B.F.A. in Painting from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his M.F.A. from Yale University. The artist lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut, and also works in New York.