FOR 7/25 STUDIO MUSEUM HARLEM PRESENTS “THE WORLD STAGE” TO OCT. 26

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NEW YORK CITY — The Studio Museum in Harlem presents “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos–Dakar,” its first solo exhibition of the work of Kehinde Wiley, a former artist in residence (2001-02). The exhibition features ten new paintings from Wiley’s multinational “World Stage” series, a global extension of his signature examinations of power and portraiture.

For this ongoing series, Wiley relocates to other countries and opens satellite studios to become familiar with local culture and history and include them in his practice. The paintings in “The World Stage: Africa, Lagos–Dakar” were created during Wiley’s extended visits to Nigeria and Senegal in 2007, where he found new subjects, inspirations and insights.

Wiley’s well-known, stylized paintings of urban African American male youths started during his residency at the Studio Museum. He placed his subjects in poses borrowed from Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century European figurative paintings to investigate the ways that portraiture has been used historically to create and enforce power and privilege.

For the “World Stage” series Wiley continues to paint young black men, but uses poses based on regional sources. Paintings from the first “World Stage” site, China, featured poses from Communist propaganda art, and were shown in an exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin last year.

For this exhibit, Wiley turns to public monuments built to celebrate independence and the end of colonialism. Future sites for the series include Brazil and Turkey.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive full-color hardcover catalog.

The museum is at 144 West 125th Street. For information. www.studiomuseum.org or 212-864-4500.