Exhibition

Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

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Now Open

October 14—November 30, 2024

Opening Reception

Monday, October 14, 6—8 PM

Location

Paris

108, rue Vieille du Temple

75003 Paris

Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat: 11 AM-7 PM

Artist

Chris Ofili
View Press Release

Installation video, Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, David Zwirner, Paris, 2024

Joyful Sorrow, Chris Ofili's first solo presentation in France, comprises a new series of paintings, titled Othello—Shroud, which develops the artist’s relationship with William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1603–04). This two-site exhibition is staged in partnership with Victoria Miro, which presents its other constitutive iteration, featuring a series of works on paper titled Othello—Reflection, in its Venice gallery from October 26 to December 14, 2024. These exhibitions are commemorated with a joint publication in collaboration with the scholar, poet, and writer Jason Allen-Paisant, available to preorder now.

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The series on view in Paris continues the artist’s yearslong engagement with William Shakespeare’s Othello. For Ofili, the tragic Moorish general—whose emotions span the apexes of love and joy, and the nadirs of sorrow—powerfully embodies the dualities that structure our being human.

“I’ve read Othello many times and have listened to recordings of the text; I’ve seen stage performances and onscreen adaptations, and I continue to discuss it. It doesn’t go away.”

—Chris Ofili in Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

Copublished by David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro, this publication presents Ofili’s two new series, Othello—Shroud and Othello—Reflection, together with a selection of poems from scholar, poet, and writer Jason Allen-Paisant’s 2023 collection, Self-Portrait as Othello. The publication also features a text from the artist's studio that explores Othello's resonances in both bodies of work.

Installation view, Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, David Zwirner, Paris, 2024

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2020–2024 (detail)

“[Ofili’s work] may at first glance seem more traditional: It is still painting, although its borders are highly permeable.... [His] paintings paradoxically take on an objecthood and gravity that has made some liken them to totems or icons, as if religious references were evoked by the very way the works are crafted, aside from what they portray.”

—Massimiliano Gioni, artistic director, New Museum, New York, in Chris Ofili: Night and Day

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2020–2024 (detail)

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2020–2024

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2020–2024

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2020–2024

Intricately carved artist’s frames of charred wood both present and conceal each of the paintings in this series, which are shrouded by curtains of black cloth on which a self-portrait of the artist can only just be made out. These pieces of fabric are nailed to frames that evoke theatrical proscenium arches; at the same time, their organic silhouettes and textures suggest elemental activity—fire burning, water churning. Lifting a shroud, uncovering a luminous face beneath, the viewer participates in a quiet drama of availability and nonavailability, invited to consider the complexities of selfhood and its representation.

Installation view, Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, David Zwirner, Paris, 2024

“I think the telling of Othello’s story seemed unfinished or rather that it generates endless narratives to be talked about. I felt that Othello was still with us here, very much present, not just as a paradigm but also as an experience.”

—Jason Allen-Paisant in conversation with Darlington Chibueze Anuonye in The Hopkins Review, quoted in Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

In each work, the central subject is portrayed in full chromatic splendor; textures range from foaming scallops of paint to skin rendered with an almost liquid shine. The word Othello is abstractly spelled out in loosely looping script at the bottom of each canvas, accompanied by a scrolling procession of interlinked, playful figures.

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2020–2024 (detail)

“Narratives and themes, however significant for what we ultimately take away, are subordinated in Ofili’s work to the painting.... The paintings work like palimpsests, built up layer on layer: though this does not create the usual effect of an impacted integument of paint but, instead, makes them seem transparent and translucent.”

—Stuart Hall, writer and cultural theorist, in Chris Ofili: Within Reach, 50th Venice Biennale, published by Victoria Miro

Installation view, Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, David Zwirner, Paris, 2024

With their large, curling horns, these figures recall the mythical Greco-Roman satyr, a pleasure-loving nature spirit often depicted as a half-human, half-goat hybrid. The satyr has featured prominently in many of Ofili’s recent works, this traditionally peripheral character fulfilling the role of protagonist and at times functioning as an allegorical stand-in for the artist himself. Here, he too is drawn into Othello’s sphere of resonance.

Chris Ofili, Othello – Shroud, 2023–2024 (detail)

“What Chris Ofili reveals in his work is a hand—a soul—that tries to encompass the drama of being in a world filled with beauty and hostility too.... Ofili’s figures stand on their own, daring to be seen.”

—Hilton Als, critic and curator, in Forces in Nature, published by Victoria Miro

Although the artist considers these works to be partly self-portraits, this does not imply that he somehow sought to cast himself as Othello as he made them. Instead, self-portraiture here is explored as a movement of imaginative empathy—a turning towards the other in the mind’s eye. This project of approaching the other through the self is undertaken in the knowledge that acts of representation can never fully capture either self or other.

Chris Ofili, Othello, 2018, portfolio of ten etchings

Chris Ofili, Othello, 2018 (detail)

Chris Ofili, Othello, 2019

The artist first depicted Othello in a 2018 suite of white-ink etchings made on paper coated with black mica, then in a subsequent 2019 oil-on-linen painting in which hazily iridescent features emerge slowly from a dark background.

“Because he is so clearly in love with Othello, whose power to seduce is given in that he is both impossible to love and not to love, Chris Ofili responds to him by beautifully and brilliantly declining to take responsibility for him. Because of this, Ofili’s portraits of Othello, which somehow incorporate both performative enactment and nonperformative refusal, might open up new pathways in the history of Othello’s portrayal.”

—Fred Moten, professor, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, in William Shakespeare 𝗑 Chris Ofili: Othello, published by David Zwirner Books

Installation view, Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow, David Zwirner, Paris, 2024

Explore Joyful Sorrow at Victoria Miro

October 26—December 14, 2024  Victoria Miro Venice | San Marco 1994

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