Derek Fordjour (1974) makes paintings, sculptures, and installations whose exuberant visual materiality gives rise to portraits and other multilayered compositions. Born of both broad sociological vision and a keen awareness of the body’s vulnerability, Fordjour’s tableaux are filled with athletes, performers, and others who play key roles in cultural rituals and communal rites of passage. In his paintings, Fordjour methodically constructs the ground of each composition through a collage-based process involving cardboard, newspaper, and other materials and pigments. The varied and textural surfaces that emerge are as complex—and physically engaging—as the dynamic subjects that Fordjour inscribes on top, within, and through them. His ability to grapple with many strata of artmaking on physical, conceptual, and straightforwardly human terms alike allows his project to communicate the widest possible array of emotions, from celebration and ecstasy to melancholy and lamentation. This, in turn, allows Fordjour to connect to audiences inside and outside of traditional art venues.
Derek Fordjour has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Pond Society, Shanghai (2021) and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2020). In 2018, commissions for the Whitney Museum of American Art Billboard Project and the Metropolitan Transit Authority Arts & Design program resulted in major public projects in New York. Recent group exhibitions include The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2021); Present Generations: Creating the Scantland Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio (2021); 100 Drawings from Now, The Drawing Center, New York (2020); and Plumb Line, the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2019). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Fordjour served as the 2020 Alex Katz Chair of Painting at The Cooper Union, New York, and serves on the faculty at the Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut as a core critic. Fordjour lives and works in New York.
© 2022. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Derek Fordjour. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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Derek Fordjour |
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Nº 16, 2014
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Three Stack, 2014 |
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Agency and Reputation (Study) 2016 |
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Tandem Blue, 2017 |
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Alpha Physical Culture Club of Harlem, 2018 |
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Backbend Double, 2018 |
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Blanc Sur Blanc, 2018 |
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Haberdashery, 2018 |
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Lotto, 2018 |
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Numbers, 2018 |
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Podium, 2018 |
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Protective Covenants & Restrictions, 2018 |
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Red Stripe Pivot, 2018 |
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Showstopper Double, 2018 |
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Starters 25, 2018 |
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Tandem Green, 2018 |
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Tandem White, 2018 |
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Two More Years, 2018 |
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Five Down Wide, 2019 |
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Signing Day, 2019 |
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Stable, 2019 |
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Three Bend Deep, 2019 |
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Untitled, 2019 |
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Worst to be First II, 2019
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Regatta Study, 2020
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