LOS ANGELES — On a recent Saturday night in downtown LA, the atmosphere at François Ghebaly was spirited. Live jazz animated the gallery and the laughter of visitors swept up the high ceilings, bathing the space in joyous, celebratory sounds. It was a fitting ambiance for The Is of It, the exhibition presenting the newest body of work by artist Ludovic Nkoth, produced during a year-long residency at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. For the Cameroon-born artist, bringing his life and practice to France, his country’s former colonizer, was an intentional choice to further explore his diasporic identity. The resulting presentation was an equally solemn and exuberant remark on the community he found through rhizomatic roots across the globe.
The artist’s large-scale, classically staged portraits capture the West African residents he encountered while living in the Montmartre’s Château Rouge neighborhood, home to a vibrant community of African immigrants. Nkoth, who emigrated to the United States at 13, connected with the local diasporic community through shared experiences of displacement. This sense of camaraderie is evident in the care and compassion with which he handles each portrait. Some figures are jovial or peaceful in shared moments of intimacy, while others remain frozen in expressions of uncertainty, their inner feelings inaccessible to the viewer. Thin lines of pigment are meticulously etched away from the paintings’ surfaces, revealing excised details alongside broad impasto strokes denoting color-blocked facial features and textile patterns.
In “A meditation upon the nothing” (2023), a standing figure’s delicate hands rest gently upon a seated figure’s head. The latter’s calmly closed eyes and slight grin encapsulate a moment of serenity. The subject is reminiscent of barbershop scenes depicted by the artist, highlighting the distinct role barbers play in creating safe spaces for community care, also featured in the work “Identity of the Moment” (2019).
Conversely, in “What is a window if not the air framed by right angles?” (2023), a child peeks out from the top of a staircase, their face conveying an Edvard Munch-like expression of shock and horror through three simple dots. At the bottom of the blood-red staircase, a disconcerted figure kneels on the floor, eyes locked on something unidentifiable in the palm of her hand. Echoing the surface of scraped paint, the pared-down backdrop of vertical lines in complementary colors heightens the tension of the scene without offering any descriptive context. Nkoth intentionally creates ambivalent scenes, leaving viewers to ponder the subjects’ subtle expressions and fill in gaps for themselves.
Rumination on what “home” means — a physical place, fleeting feeling, or collection of memories — is a central and ongoing theme of exploration for the artist in his study of the African diaspora. The exhibition’s title, The Is of It, references the novel Água Viva (1973) by Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer and painter Clarice Lispector, who wrote, “Everything has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the is of the thing. These instants passing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space.”
Through his practice, Nkoth continuously grasps to connect threads of home as it remains a shape-shifting and ever-moving target. Finding restitution in the here and now, while dispelling illusions of a fixed self-identity, intimately connects the artist to the diasporic subjects of his work. Between animated celebrations, fleeting exchanges, and unresolved lapses, the artist’s ability to capture the “is” of it, however transient it may be, marks this as his most commemorative and nuanced series yet.
The Is of It continues at François Ghebaly (2245 E Washington Blvd, Downtown, Los Angeles) through November 11. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
