On exhibit September 30, 2022–February 19, 2023 at the Saint Louis Art Museum

This installment in the Saint Louis Art Museum’s “Currents” series features the work of artist Meleko Mokgosi. The Botswana-born artist creates large-scale, figurative and text-based paintings that draw from traditions of history painting and cinema. These works deftly probe systems of knowledge production and the politics of representation.

Founded in 1978, the “Currents” series serves as a laboratory for emerging and mid-career artists to create and exhibit new work. Featured artists have included Matthew Buckingham, Dale Chihuly, Leonardo Drew, Brian Eno, Ellen Gallagher, Frank Gehry, Donald Judd, Julie Mehretu, Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman.

In “Currents 122,” Mokgosi will exhibit work from his new project, “Spaces of Subjection,” which explores space as a metaphor, theoretical device and social construct to question conventional ideas of subjecthood and subject formation. The exhibition examines subjection and subjectivity as they pertain to his perspectives on African, African American and Black life. The works engage with political forces and systems of power that affect people’s daily existence and contribute to how racial, gender and other differences between identities are endowed with significance and learned from childhood.

Mokgosi’s unique painting process contributes to how he develops meaning. He begins on a stretched canvas prepared not with the customary white ground but with a base layer of clear gesso, a thin, transparent primer that stiffens the canvas. Instead of adding white to create highlights, Mokgosi starts with the darkest shadow and then removes paint with brushes and cloths to create areas of highlight, like drawing with charcoal.

Pictured: © Meleko Mokgosi, Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery