Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis
2017
June 9 – October 7
Blue Bathers (2014) by Chris Ofili was included in the group exhibition Blue Black at Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
Curated by the American artist Glenn Ligon and inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s sculpture Blue Black (2000) which is permanently installed at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the exhibition explored questions about language, identity, and perception through the lens of these two colors.
As Ligon explained in an interview with The New York Times, "In his [Chris Ofili's] Blue Bathers, the blueness is about Trinidad, where his studio was. Ofili's describing this kind of equatorial light, how in Trinidad even in the darkness there's a luminosity. [That he was] able to capture that in the painting, I thought, was amazing."
The exhibition also included Untitled (policeman) (2015) by gallery artist Kerry James Marshall.