Tariku Shiferaw has joined Galerie Lelong & Co.’s artist roster and is scheduled to present his first solo exhibition with the gallery in spring 2021. The Ethiopian-American artist will continue to be represented by Addis Fine Art in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and inLondon.
Shiferaw is best known for his work in geometric abstraction. His densely-layered works center on the artist’s notion of the “mark,” which “reveals the thinker behind the gesture—an evidence of prior markings of ideas and self onto the space,” according to Shiferaw. He also utilizes materials such as mylar and vinyl to add further dimensionality to his canvases, while his sculptural works utilize commonplace objects such as wooden pallets or even sweatshirts to create assemblages that carry similar gridlike visual motifs.
Mary Sabbatino, vice president and partner at Galerie Lelong & Co., said:
Abstraction as a language to communicate political and social ideas and utopia has a long history in modernism, beginning with Malevich. Though many younger artists have embraced figuration to talk directly about today’s confrontations with injustice, Shiferaw’s investigation of the grid and surface demonstrates that abstraction is just as powerful a language for a commentary on humanity’s struggle at this moment in time.
Shiferaw has previously participated in exhibitions at the Drawing Center in New York, as well as the 2017 Whitney Biennial as part of Occupy Museums’ Debtfair project. In 2019, he was a participant in the Whitney’s Independent Study Program. He is a current participant of Open Sessions at The Drawing Center and an artist in residence at the LES Studio Program. According to Artsy data, demand for Shiferaw’s work has seen a steady increase over the past four years, and especially in 2020. His works on the platform have garnered more than twice as many inquiries so far this year as they did in all of 2019.
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