Kehinde Wiley

Sparkle reminds me that I'm expected to sound off on the recent Kehinde Wiley show at the BMA.

Since Sparkle's posting covered most of the ground, I'll just say that its perfectly clear to me that these images are queer, and queer in the old-fashioned sense of transgressing the homo/hetero distinction in sexuality and culture.

The look that Wiley's paintings invite is the look that Wiley casts upon his subjects, the glance with which he hails them in the street or nightclub, the words with which he initiates a conversation, the reassurance with which he brings them back to his studio to pose and thus complete his seduction.

His subjects pose for cash; Wiley ennobles them in paintings that partake (a bit too much so) of a snapshot aesthetic. In the guise of creating "positive images" of black men, Wiley creates something much more significant and disorienting. He glances between the cracks of desire and identification, ornamenting these bodies about whom he wishes to know nothing except that they are young, black and strikingly male. He ornaments them with their own clothes and with their self-chosen poses, but he also ornaments them with ormullo and paisley, roses and, yes, sperm. Call it art-historical bling.

Like the powerful queer art tradition that Wiley both cites and revises (Carravagio and Mapplethorpe come to mind), his brush confesses everything and nothing.