LARRY AMPONSAH
Larry Amponsah (b: 1989, Ghana) graduated from the Royal College of Arts (RCA), London in 2018, after training in traditional painting at Jiangsu University in China, and painting at the KNUST University in Ghana.
He mixes traditional and contemporary modes of image-making including collage, photography, print, painting, and digitization to produce his distinctive paintings.
In the last three years, he has focused his work on the examination of the politics of portraiture, joining quite a few contemporary artists of African origin who are eager to represent the black body in the global art production.
Amponsah borrows from the history of art and photography, as well as from contemporary social media and advertising, to elaborate his imaginary portraits. Elements of context include motifs of seemingly immediate, universal symbolic evocations (a lush palm leaf, a designer bag) while the character’s face is rendered multi- dimensional, physically, and psychologically, by using real-or painted- collages. The face bursting with singularity and expressivity contrasts the wilful banality of the clues, an unbalance that is conducive to push our pre-conceptions away, the paintings conveying the moving, unstable character of identity, and questioning how it is projected, and how it is perceived.
Amponsah graduated from the Royal College of Arts (RCA), London in 2018, after training in traditional painting at Jiangsu University in China, and painting at the KNUST University in Ghana.
Solo shows include 50 Golborne, London, the Breeder Gallery, Athens and Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai. He participated in many group shows in the UK, including at the Delphina Foundation, the RCA, the Courtauld Gallery, the National Maritime Museum.
