
GIDEON APPAH
Another Place
2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
Diptych, overall: 93 1/4 by 117 3/4 in. 236.9 by 299.1 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Melody
2020
Acrylic on canvas
95 1/4 by 71 5/8 in. 241.9 by 181.9 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Most Precious
2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
47 1/16 by 39 5/16 in. 119.5 by 99.9 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Remember Our Stars
2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
78 by 78 in. 198.1 by 198.1 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Teen Smoking on an Imaginary Street
2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
78 1/4 by 58 1/2 in. 198.8 by 148.6 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Justin
2019
Acrylic on canvas
20 by 15 in. 50.8 by 38.1 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Paa Kofi Portrait
2019
Oil and acrylic on canvas
38 3/4 by 31 in. 98.4 by 78.7 cm.
GIDEON APPAH
Stroll Around
2019
Oil, acrylic and wax on canvas
52 by 53 in. 132.1 by 134.6 cm.
b. 1987, Ghana, Africa
Lives and works in Accra, Ghana
Gideon Appah’s evocative paintings and drawings pull from experiences of intimacy and leisure that speak to recollection, history and mythology. His flattened, jewel-like compositions are centered around stylish figures, both known and imagined, luscious landscapes, prevalent architecture, African folklore and daily rituals from his childhood. These sumptuous scenes are often informed by post-independent Ghana, most readily sourced from film stills, newspaper clippings, journals and family photographs created in the 1960s through 1980s. One of the leading painters of his generation, Appah creates contemporary cosmopolitan worlds with a dreamlike, fauvist application to respond directly to his own familial stories and a country’s history.
Born in Ghana in 1987, Appah lives and works in Accra. His most recent solo show, Blue Boys Blues, was on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York in 2020. His works have also been exhibited internationally, including at Casa Barragan, Mexico City; Ghana Science Museum, Accra; Goethe Institute, Accra; KNUST Museum, Kumasi and Nubuke Foundation, Accra. His forthcoming solo show at Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, opens January 2022. His work is included in the collection of the Absa Museum, Johannesburg; Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakesh and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto as well as private collections. He was shortlisted for the 2016 Kuenyehia Art Prize and 2022 Henrike Grohs Art Award.
On February 19, 2022, the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU) will open the first solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist Gideon Appah. Appah is a young painter who incorporates Ghanaian cultural ephemera and imagination into his work, which responds to contemporary Ghanaian culture through newspaper clippings, entertainment posters, and films from the ’70s-’80s This exhibition will be largely comprised of newly commissioned work and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog.
Accra, Ghana’s Noldor Artist Residency, established this past November with an inaugural four-week residency awarded to emerging Ghanian artist Emmanuel Taku, has announced that it is adding a yearlong program for junior and senior fellows and that it will be occupying a 7,500-square foot space in a former pharmaceutical warehouse in the city’s burgeoning Labadi arts district. The fellowship program is aimed at emerging and midcareer contemporary artists from Africa and its diaspora, with the intent of helping them collectively deepen their practices, while fostering a sense of community. Additionally, the organization hopes to launch its junior fellows into the primary art market via representation by a commercial gallery.
For his first institutional solo show in the US, ‘Forgotten, Nudes, Landscapes’ at ICA VCU, Ghanaian artist Gideon Appah presents a series of newly commissioned, large-scale canvases. In the first gallery, Red Valley and Ten Nudes and a Landscape (both 2021) depict hazy, magma-like landscapes onto which the silhouettes of various figures – dancing, reclining – have been lightly superimposed. They might be the ghosts of clubbers in some primordial land, or visions of future party-goers in a post-apocalyptic world. Alongside these works hang three smaller paintings of mythic nudes: gods to occupy these otherworldly scenes, perhaps. Appah’s figures are usually composites of friends, characters from popular Ghanaian films and chance acquaintances. These paintings, which mark a departure from his earlier work about Ghanaian nightlife, increasingly incorporate shamanic or tarot-like symbols: The Young Minotaur (2021), for instance, who looks pensively off into the distance across a stormy sky, two fleshy skin-tone horns sprouting from his head.
Ascendent Ghanian artist Gideon Appah is currently enjoying his first institutional solo show at The ICA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. A plethora of new paintings, drawings and media ephemera make up the display, which aims to “chronicle the cycle of Ghana’s cultural memory – from heyday to bygone”. Appah has drawn on archive newspaper clippings, posters and films for the purpose, resulting in a series of dreamy, gesturally rendered tableaux that consider “the rise and fall of Ghana’s cinema and leisure culture”.
Artist Gideon Appah’s story begins with homemade comic books of dinosaurs living among people and the adventures of Night Man, his very own masked crusader. "He fought for justice, kind of like Superman or Batman," Appah says via teleconference from Ghana.
In a relatively short career, the West African painter has gone through many different stylistic phases, exploring — and combining — surrealism, nature scenes and portraiture. The 35-year-old rising star will have his first solo U.S. exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU this year from Feb. 11 to June 19. More than 30 of his paintings, most of them new works, will be showcased on both sides of the museum's upstairs gallery.
Cecily Brown’s new paintings, Sam Gilliam’s sculptures and monochromes, Gideon Appah’s otherworldly vistas, Tishan Hsu’s first museum survey and works from the Purvis Young trove.