Lot 49 - Kofi Perry - The Great Sculptor's Chisels

Essence on paper
2025
A6 (10x15cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Rosie Penny

About

Kofi Perry (b.1998, Sidon) is an American contemporary painter whose work and practice reimagines the ancient past through a contemporary Black American perspective. His large-scale, multi-figure narrative paintings, alongside intimate portraits and museal still life compositions, offer a reinterpretation of classicism, drawing from the shared aesthetics of ancient civilisations: anatomical idealisation, round and simple forms and frieze compositions. His works build on a continuous lore, evoking themes of magic, spirituality and ancient history, intertwined with the austerity of gangsta rap and imagery of the Black Panther Party.

Education

2021-2022
BFA (Hons), City and Guilds of London Art School, London, UK
2018-2020
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA
2017-2018
Hong Kong Art School, Hong Kong

Solo Exhibitions

2025
(Upcoming), Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK
2024
1-54 Art Fair with DADA Gallery, Somerset House, London, UK
Remnants From a Distant Future, curated by Jo Baring, The Lightbox, Woking, UK

Group Exhibitions

2025
(Upcoming), Cob Gallery, London, UK
2024
A Portrait of the Artist (Pool with Two Figures), Cob Gallery, London, UK
Tender Communions, DADA Gallery, Cromwell Place, London, UK
2023
Ingram Prize, juried by Jo Baring, Cromwell Place, London, UK

Awards

2023
Ingram Prize, The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art
2022
The Baton Fine Art Prize, juried by Oli Epp, Natalia Gonzalez Martin and Flora Yukhnovich, City and Guilds of London Art School
2020
The Charles Toppan Prize, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Public Collections

Cheng-Lan Foundation, Hong Kong
The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, London, UK
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, USA
Sweetwater Center for the Arts, Sewickley, USA

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork

The Great Sculptor’s Chisels depicts a hand holding three metal chisels that belong to a central character in my fictional Afrofuturist world. The painting’s closely cropped composition turns the image into a series of tubular forms, foregrounding my preference for simple and broad shapes. My choice of metal chisels as a narrative subject makes reference to bullets and gun culture in Hip-hop, tethering my fictional world to contemporary Black culture and reimagining the violence in rap music as a near-militant creative sentiment.