Conrad Egyir: Starlight
Jessica Silverman is pleased to present an online exhibition featuring a new body of work by Detroit-based artist Conrad Egyir. Starlight is the artist’s third solo presentation with the gallery and introduces a new series of large-scale portraits reflecting on Blackness, youth, and creativity in his home country of Ghana. At six and four feet in diameter, these celebratory tondos embrace the artist’s Ghanaian roots and his connections to local and global communities.
Over the past three years, Egyir has traveled consistently to Aburi, a village north of Accra, where he has begun philanthropic work on building a school and an orphanage. For Egyir, whose grandfather was an educator in Aburi, his philanthropic work is a natural extension of his upbringing and his artistic practice.
While Egyir’s previous works have focused on the artists’ friends and fellow artists who make up his community in Detroit, this new series highlights people living in Aburi. Saluting the sisters, neighbors, and community that form his family there and aid in the growth of the village, these portraits engage ideas around how individuals contribute to the collective.
Watch Conrad Egyir discussing his new work and studio process in the video below.
In what has become his signature style, Egyir captures subtle gestures, expressions and accoutrements that distinguish his sitters, imbuing them with grace and vitality. Using round canvases, popularized in Renaissance Italy, portraits in this series echo a kind of visual litany of saints.
In A Name For A Heart And A Heart For A Crown (2023), a ring reminiscent of a planetary orbit hovers like a halo around the subject. Adorned in silver and gold earrings and eyeglasses, she’s gilded and glorified—a modern day saint.
Continuing his investigations of the relationship of volume and shape to the flatness of the canvas, Egyir extends his portraits beyond the circular plane of his canvases. In Jazzzzmine's Delight (2023) a woman’s glittering updo sits on top on the canvas like a crown while the frame itself is a kind of mantle holding living plants. Perched on either side of the frame, small succulents and flowers adorn his subjects and allude to ideas of care, love, and nourishment. Amid portraits and plants, a community flourishes. Combining the graphic sensuality of Pop Art with the far-reaching narratives of history painting, Egyir’s arresting portraits depict the dreams and ambitions of a local community with global reach.
Conrad Egyir (b. 1989, Accra, Ghana) received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has enjoyed recent solo exhibitions at UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles; ICA San José, CA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI. His work is in the permanent collections of Pérez Art Museum, Miami; The Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Rennie Collection, Vancouver BC; the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, NY; Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, Pasadena; and the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Egyir has been awarded residencies by Vermont Studio Center; ACRE Residency, Wisconsin; the Ox-Bow School of Arts and Artist Residency, Saugatuck, MI; and the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), Brooklyn. Egyir’s work will be included in Cranbrook Art Museum’s upcoming show in October 2023. He lives and works in Detroit and is represented by Jessica Silverman.
