Painted in 2003, a year after Kehinde Wiley's inaugural solo exhibition, Passing/Posing, the Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, 2002, Untitled is emblematic of the artist's distinctive touch in contemporary portraiture. Renowned for his portrayals that position African Americans within the traditional contexts of Old Master paintings, Wiley adeptly employs a spectrum of mediums such as painting, sculpture, and video to raise questions about race, gender, and the politics of representation.
During his residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem from 2001-2002, Wiley initiated his innovative "street casting" method, where he would invite strangers from spontaneous encounters on the street to sit for a portrait, combining the pose of an art historical reference image with the aesthetics of that individual’s own “street style.” Wiley continues this method to the present day, painting individuals around the world, from the streets of Harlem, to Brussels, to Dakar. Untitled thus stands as an exciting, early example of a renowned artist’s practice, whose approach to portraiture and Black identity in art has had an astonishing impact on painting in the 21st century.
Untitled presents an anonymous young Black man posed in prayer, one hand extended toward the sky and the other resting upon his chest. Encircling the subject's visage is a resplendent, diffuse halo of golden yellow, reminiscent, like the man’s hand gestures, of the attributes of angels and saints in Byzantine devotional icons and medieval European Catholic imagery. The red backdrop creates a vibrant contrast to the delicate floral design that laces across the surface of the work, reminiscent of Willam Morris’ textile patterns, or the marginalia of medieval French and Flemish manuscripts.
In Untitled, Wiley ingeniously employs symbols of urban capitalism—manifested through the sitter’s streetwear and ostentatious self-presentation—to spotlight media-driven stereotypes of Black men in society. Wiley’s gaze is both critical and empowering, calling to account stereotypically subservient representations of Black men in art, and radically visualizing Blackness in a pose of power, instead. Created during the nascent stages of Wiley's "street casting" technique, Untitled demonstrates Wiley’s commitment to crafting a new visual idiom that honors and glorifies the everyday person, placing the Black male body center stage.