Iké Udé, Large Mixed Media Construction Sculpture Painting Ike Ude African American Art

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Iké Udé (1964- Nigerian American)
Hand signed and dated 1993 on verso.
Large carved and painted abstract wood sculptural construction
… Read more Iké Udé (1964- Nigerian American)
Hand signed and dated 1993 on verso.
Large carved and painted abstract wood sculptural construction
Dimensions: 58 X 26 X 3 inches


The work of Nigerian-born Iké Udé explores a world of dualities: photographer/performance artist, artist/spectator, Africa /post-nationalist, mainstream marginal, individual everyman and fashion art.
Iké Udé (born 1964) is a Nigerian-American photographer, performance artist,
Ike Ude was born in 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria where he was raised. The eldest son of a wealthy family, he was exposed to photography and portraiture at an early age by dressing up for biweekly family portraits. Udé knew he was an artist by the age of six, when he developed a habit of firing a catapult at passers-by when he disapproved of their walk or the way they were dressed. As an adolescent, Udé attended the Government Secondary School, a British boarding school in Afikpo Nigeria. He was a habitué of London before he moved to New York in 1981 to study Media Communications at Hunter College, CUNY. He began his art career in the late 1980s with abstract painting and drawing. Since the 1990s, photography has been his primary medium. Udé is a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria.
Udé's paintings and drawings are less well known than his photography, though critics and art historians have recognized his early work. The late Henry Geldzahler, said of Udé's paintings and works on paper: "I am touched and amazed at the ways in which he manages to blend invisibly the modernist tradition with his own Nigerian roots. There is never anything forced in the conjunction; air and light seem to be his media."
Udé began his Cover Girls series in 1994. Each photograph imitates the cover of a popular fashion or lifestyle magazines, in which the artist himself is featured as the model. (ala the work of Cindy Sherman) The photographs were consciously stylized, posed, photographed and then paired with type matching that of the respected magazine. At first glance, each photograph appears to be an authentic magazine cover. Udé used the magazine cover as a stage to critique the fetishism of the upper class white model and the effects of popular culture on today's consumerist society. The series was exhibited in 1994 in the New York City gallery Exit Art. Udé's black and white series of photographs, Uli, references both high fashion and Uli body art, wall motifs from Udé's Igbo heritage. The photographs explore the anonymity of the inscribed and disembodied self. Udé's dynamic use of light, namely the chiaroscuro effect, serves as a critical compositional element in the series.
Udé's Beyond Decorum series, begun in 1999, juxtaposes photographs of men's shirts and women's pumps with suggestive personal advertisements in place of the clothing tags.
With its accompanying book, Beyond Decorum: Photographs by Iké Udé, the series traveled across the United States and Canada. The exhibition was shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine; OBORO in Montreal, Canada; Sert Gallery; Carpenter Center at the Harvard University Art Museum; and MAK Museum in Vienna, Austria before traveling for two more years internationally.
Udé's Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum is a conversation between his alter ego, Visconti, and the celebrity Paris Hilton. The exhibition consisted of several mixed media works, assembled with material from gossip blogs, wallpaper samples, photocopies, mirrors, fashion and lifestyle magazines, and pornography sites. Combined, these pieces illustrate the construction of the Paris Hilton phenomenon, inviting viewers to question what they really know about fame and the aesthetics of cultural decay. The exhibition was shown in New York's Stux Gallery in 2008. In 2009 the exhibition opened at the Stenersen Museum in Oslo becoming Udé's first solo exhibition in Norway.
Udé's portraits, most notably those in Sartorial Anarchy, are a combination of wit and historicism. His work in this area (and others) features queer and nonbinary artists, highlighting a reclamation of the gay experience in art, notes Kavi Gupta Gallery. These works possess a contemporary haute couture vibe, or what New York Times art critic Roberta Smith refers to as "irreverent, cultural polyglot self-portraits". In a review for photographmag Jean Dykstra writes, "As much as identity is a cultural construct, it's also an individual creation, and few people have fashioned a self with as much flourish as Iké Udé. Sartorial Anarchy is at once a reference to and departure from dandyism. Udé's conceptual use of historical and contemporary clothing attempts to catalog culture rather than to merely reflect fashion trends. Udé constructs the costumes, props and his own pose as a still life, which is then photographed by an assistant. Udé paints the backgrounds for each photograph and completes post-production procedures himself. The series was exhibited in The Global Africa Project at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York (2010), and in Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (2013). Udé's series was also exhibited at the Leila Heller Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Entitled Style and Sympathies, this exhibit presented a selection of his self-portraits from the series. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Sheldon Museum of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, have acquired works from Sartorial Anarchy.
He has collaborated with artist Lyle Ashton Harris and is included in the book Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs. Photographs by Lyle Ashton Harris. Other contributors include Vince Aletti, Martina Attille, Ulrich Baer, Gregg Bordowitz, Adrienne Edwards, Malik Gaines, Lucy Gallun, Thomas Allen Harris, Rashid Johnson, Thomas J. Lax, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, Parissah Rhayee Lin, Catherine Lord, Roxana Marcoci, Pamela Newkirk, Clarence Otis Jr., Robert Reid-Pharr, Robert Storr, Mickalene Thomas, and Ike Ude. The CHIC Index is an online anthology of Udé's portraits that depict stylish people in New York City. The photos show the range of the individual's signature "looks," and feature, among others, Geoffrey Bradfield, Robert Verdi, Patrick McDonald, Stephen Knoll, Somers Farkas and Jean Shafiroff.
In 1995 Udé created aRUDE magazine, named in homage to the Jamaican rude boys of 1960s London. The magazine is similar to Interview and features conversations with artists, photographers, and designers as well as editorials on fashion, beauty and style. While the magazine began as a print publication, it has been published solely online since 2009.
Udé is the author of Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed, published by Harper Collins in 2008. The volume profiles 55 influential arbiters of style. Style File features writings and contributions from Valerie Steel, director and chief curator at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology (F. I. T.), and Harold Koda, the former curator-in-charge of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The publication provides information on all of the 55 women and men profiled, including John Galliano, Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera, Diane von Furstenberg, Dita Von Teese, and Christian Louboutin.

Publications
Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Iké Udé. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed. HarperCollins, 2008.
Nollywood Portraits: A Radical Beauty. Skira Rizzoli, 2016
His work is in the permanent collections of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Art, Sheldon Museum, RISD Museum, New Britain Museum of American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Arts and in many private collections; exhibited in solo and group exhibitions; reviewed in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Flash Art, Art News and such. His articles on fashion and art have been published in magazines and newspapers worldwide. See less