Kohshin Finley
Independent Art Fair
May 5th - 8th, 2022
Tilton Gallery is delighted to present a new group of paintings by Kohshin Finley in a solo exhibition at the Independent Art Fair, May 5th - 8th, 2022. Based in Los Angeles, Finley paints portraits of friends and family that convey a deep sense of humanity. He has written:
My paintings document the life of my friends and family, portraying them as figures fully present in their own stories, not ones created for them.
When spending time with my peers, I will often have my camera in my hand to take photographs. I use the photographs I take as the template for my oil-based paintings. Painting in grisaille evens the visual playing field similar to how black and white photography does, allowing the audience to clearly focus on the details and narratives within the artwork.
I enliven the surface of the painting with written notes about the shared history between my featured peers and I. It is not important whether or not the words are legible. I’m more interested in these marks as a trace of my conversations with my community and how they indicate the presence of me as the artist.
Continuing the age long tradition of portraiture, Finley’s newest body of work approaches his subject matter more abstractly than before. Brush strokes have become more expressionistic and the emotions and vulnerability of the people portrayed is heightened by the their stance, turning away from the viewer and the surface of the canvas. His protagonists are in their own thoughts, gazes averted, looking at something beyond the vision of the viewer. We are invited to enter their worlds and thoughts, to see the world from their point of view, to wonder what they are looking at, what they are thinking. This creates a sense of mystery that goes beyond any didactic portrayal. Written notes, often barely visible, enhance this sense of the enigmatic as well as the awareness that there is a story to be told.
Kohshin Finley was born in 1989 in Los Angeles, CA and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Otis College of Art and Design in 2012. His work has been featured in notable exhibitions including Black American Portraits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2021-22; Shattered Glass and Shattered Glass II at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles, CA and Miami, FL, respectively; Feedback curated by Helen Molesworth at Jack Shainman: The School, Kinderhook, NY all in 2021; and Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA in 2019. His work is in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. His work was included in the group exhibition, Portraits, at Tilton Gallery earlier this year. Finley lives and works in Los Angeles.