So from the safety of the thicket and clean out of sight
The Nightingale’s song drifts from dusk to daylight,
To Mesmerise Jinns with high notes and hums,
As Nightly They Contemplate Whence It Comes.
Having been moved by the works of London’s Lynette Yiadom-Boakye in the past, I loved that her new show with Jack Shainman in New York revolves around a poem and some Dionysian pleasure. The characters in her work are often sturdy, proud, powerful. In this show, Many A Moonlit Caveat, they are indulging in drink, in food, in dance, in spending time together. She is often not photographed, a private artist, but her work has done the talking, and in this case, the work is nearly theatrical, a play where she directs the scenes that feel lively and, in some cases, rather intense. There is a lot of sound to these paintings, and in the past, I feel like there has been a bold quiet.
Over the span of 46 (!) new works, the audience is asked, if not tasked, to step into these scenes and speculate about the dialogue, backstory and outcome that the painting deliberately withholds. I think in the past, I think of her work almost more like an author than just a painter, and I didn’t know if what I was observing was fair, but now here, I feel almost like I have been relieved of doubt. These portraits feel uncannily theatrical: her anonymous, invented sitters and actors are cast into spare, almost stage‑like spaces where paint acts as costume and light becomes a spotlight.
She has once said “I write about the things I can’t paint and paint the things I can’t write about,” and the fact the show leads with the poem instead of a press release and artist statement is a great statement onto itself. The work lends itself to such prose. —Evan Pricco
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